r

PROPHETS, POETS, AND PHILOSOPHERS
OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

TORONTO

Prophets, Poets, and Philosophers
of the Ancient World

BY

HENRY OSBORN TAYLOR

LIBERTY VA CERCANDO

Yorfc

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1919

All rights reserved

T3

COPYRIGHT, 1915,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1915.

J. 8. Gushing Co. — Berwick <fe Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

IN MEMORIAM

SAMUEL ISHAM

CONTENTS

PACK

PROLOGUE ..... i

CHAPTER

I. CHALDjSA AND EGYPT 6

II. CHINA: DUTY AND DETACHMENT .... 14

III. THE INDIAN ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY . 46

IV. ZARATHUSHTRA ... 68

r

V. THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 75

VI. THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT IN GREEK POETRY . 121

VII. GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 150

VIII. INTERMEDIARIES . 180

IX. JESUS 207

X. PAUL 218

XI. AUGUSTINE . 238

XII. THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE .... 276

Vll

PREFACE

THIS book appeared three years ago under the
rather blind title of Deliverance. It may have suffered
also from the lack of a preface to explain its character
and contents. Its object was to set forth, in the
briefest possible compass, the various ways in which
some of the wisest men of the Ancient World ap-
proached the ultimate problems of humanity, and
solved them. Their solutions embraced convictions
concerning God and man, concerning human right-
eousness and happiness, and the principles of thought
and action. Thus these thinkers satisfied their
natures, and reached some sovereign reconciliation,
some personal adjustment between their concep-
tion of the world about them and their own physical
and spiritual experience.

All of them recognized the fundamental conclu-
sion of the practical reason, that the doer of an act,
the thinker of a thought, will not escape its conse-
quences. This was their common agreement. Yet
as they were of divers races, their temperaments
differed ; so did their convictions touching God and
man, and their conceptions of man's noblest aims
and highest good. They could not reach the same

I

self-adjustment or reconciliation with the powers
of life. In fact, their thoughts, projected along
diverging lines, opened the many ways by which
mankind was to explore its destinies.

Our own thoughts are very old. They have
done duty in the minds of bygone men. They were
first harnessed in the systems of those Great Ones
(to whom I have been referring), those apparent
sources of the world's convictions, who in their
time set in new-found relationships, and made
living, the disjecta membra of human experience
and casual reflection. Yet the thoughts may be
ours as well as theirs, by virtue of the very same
title of having them flash joyfully upon the mind.

One realises a universal kinship in human need
and aspiration when following such thoughts seem-
ingly afar in the minds of these Founders who have
passed on. They who may have died ages ago are
nearer to us than the alien masses among whom we
move. They are the spiritual fathers of us all, and
we make ourselves consciously their sons by coming
to know them in their achieved or striven-for ad-
justment of themselves with the eternal, and in
their attunement of their desires to human limita-
tions. Some men live in the eternities, and must
at their peril keep in tune with them. The need of
adaptation belongs to them peculiarly. Yet, in
some degree, it pertains to all who are touched with
meditation; and the endeavour for it, which is an

PREFACE 3

endeavour for peace and spiritual freedom, is an
element of life which carries across centuries and
millenniums. Although that which those Ancients
reached, or even that which they tried for, may not
be for us, still the contemplation of their efforts
is as the effect of noble sculpture and poetry, bring-
ing something like the final calm, the emotional
purge, of tragedy.

The plan of this little book is to attempt some
ordering and statement of the ways in which our
spiritual ancestors of all times and countries adapted
themselves to the fears and hopes of their natures,
thus reaching a freedom of action in which they
accomplished their lives; or, it may be, they did
but find peace; yet brought it forth from such
depth of conviction that their peace became peace
for thousands and for millions.

I shall not enter at large upon the antecedents
or even the setting of these men, or trace the for-
tunes of their influence. My intention, rather, is
to set forth simply and by themselves those great
individuals who illustrate the ways of human ad-
justment with life, its limitations, aspirations, and
conceived determining powers, working within or
from without.

But however we may seek to simplify our reflec-
tions, we cannot limit ourselves to any one category
of adjustment. The needs of men are not the same
universally; and the human adaptation may relate

to conduct or to speculation, to distress at life's
chain of torment, or to fear of extinction ; it may
relate to the impulse to speculate and know, or to
the need to be " saved." For one man shall find
his peace in action, another in the rejection of action,
even in the seeming destruction of desires. An-
other shall have peace and freedom through intel-
lectual enquiry, while another must obey his God,
or love his God, and may stand in very conscious
need of divine salvation. The adjustment sought
by Confucius was very different from that which
drew the mind of Plato, or led Augustine to the
City of God. Often quite different motives may
inspire the reasonings which incidentally bring men
to like conclusions. The Absolute Brahma of the
Upanishads and the Being of Parmenides have cer-
tain common metaphysical foundations; but the
motives impelling the Hindu and the Eleatic to
somewhat similar results were as different as the
Greek and Indian temperaments, - - as different as
those which likewise brought Gotama and Hera-
cleitus to the conviction that existence is ceaseless
flux. The life-adjustment of the early Greek phi-
losophers had to do with scientific curiosity; they
were seeking hypothetical explanations of the world
about them, themselves perhaps implicitly included ;
they were not, like Gotama, seeking relief from the
tedious impermanence of personal experience, any
more than they were seeking to assure their own

PREFACE 5

eternal welfare in and through the love of God —
the motive around which surged the Christian yearn-
ing for salvation. Evidently every "religion" is
a means of adjustment, or deliverance ; but there are
other adjustments, which are not religious in any
current acceptation of the word.

There is an advantage in commencing, and it
may be ending, with the seers of the ancient world,
and their early Christian successors to the suffrages
of men. For they are fundamental, verily ele-
mental in their exemplifications of the main divisions
of the human need for an adjustment between the
instincts and faculties of human nature and the
powers conceivably controlling its accomplishment
and destiny. We shall never altogether issue from
between the projected lines of their achievement,
however far we may seem to have advanced.

CHAPTER I

CHAUXflBA AND EGYPT

TT7HEN did the need for adjustment begin?
To answer this is to answer the unanswerable
question — when did men begin ? Thirty thousand
years ago, on the cave walls at Altamira, there
were paintings of animals, possibly carrying tote-
mistic import. Without disturbing these 'pre-
historic" enigmas, we may more fruitfully consider
"historic" beginnings, say in Chaldaea and Egypt,
— these being ancient times for us, when men's
so-called minds were rilled with notions which
human experience has since found irrational and
indeed incomprehensible.

It is always difficult for one time to understand
another; among contemporaries mutual under-
standing rarely extends beyond the range of con-
geniality ! With physical needs fundamentally the
same, men have always been desirous, restless,
apprehensive, anticipating evils real or imaginary,
striving to guard against them, — evils of this life
or touching existence after death. Although archaic
adjustments with imagined anxieties seem so foolish
now, the underlying human nature and human need
are related to ourselves. Hundreds of thousands

6

CHALD^EA AND EGYPT 7

of men and women are seeking to adjust themselves
with the eternal ways, and hope to see the everlast-
ing stars. All is mystery still, albeit the forces
holding man are no longer "supernatural," and the
desired adjustment refers little to the life to come.
Let no one think that he has shaken off the past !
We are in and of it, if we are also of ourselves.
Our thoughts and the images in which we clothe
them, what ancestry they trail out of a dim and
ever lengthening distance, back through Rome to
Greece, and through Greece backward still and
eastward to the valleys of the Nile and the Eu-
phrates. And there the receding trail only begins,
for further back it passes, not ceasing, only to our
blindness vanishing in a remote and semihuman
past.

It is well to recognise the pit from which we have
been digged. Therefore, if for no other purpose,
let us contemplate, for a little, one or two ancient
lines of attempted adjustment, of endeavour after
some sort of spiritual deliverance, to which the name
of no individual attaches, but rather that of a
people or a land, in this case Mesopotamia and
Egypt. The peoples of Mesopotamia as well as
the Egyptians accumulated a colossal material
equipment, and made a large advance in the social
ordering of life. A certain King Hammurapi has
of late years become the central figure of Meso-
potamian history. At the opening of the second

8 DELIVERANCE

millennium before Christ, he established the King-
dom of Babylon, and reigned as a King of law and
righteousness, as well as might. It was a period,
it was indeed a land, of trade and agriculture, regu-
lated by law and custom. Hammurapi issued a
code of laws, the most signal legal document of far
antiquity, and a worthy predecessor for the civil
law of Rome, of which it may have been a remote
and partial source. Thus the Babylonian people
show how deftly they had settled themselves in
their human relationships, and had reached some
facile freedom of conduct. Yet their lives were
overhung with dread. They were very fearful of
the unseen — of the imagined powers which they
sought to coerce by magic, or move through prayer.
They had thus devised nostrums for their hamper-
ing fears, and yet had found no sure stay for their
furthest hopes — dreary at best, and at worst rilled
with horror, was existence within and beyond the
grave. No spell or prayer had been devised to
help the dead. Magic and prayer, the warning of
the sheep's liver, the portents of the storm, the phases
of sun and moon and stars, availed only the living.
As the centuries went on, the Babylonians and
Assyrians improved their conceptions of the Gods ;
ascribed justice to them, beneficence, righteousness,
even pity. Yet always with fear and abasement:
'Thy slave who bears the weight, of thy wrath
is covered with dust"; and centuries later Nebu-

CHALD^A AND EGYPT 9

chadnezzar says that he loves the fear of God. There
had also come to the Babylonians and Assyrians
quite positive thoughts of their own shortcomings,
omissions, social crimes. All such delinquencies,
when thought of with reference to the gods, fell
within the category of sin. They bewailed their
sins prostrate before their gods, and begged forgive-
ness. Yet they never distinguished clearly between
involuntary oversight and intended wrong. Cere-
monial omission, eating or treading on the forbidden
thing, brought divine anger with plague and punish-
ment, just as quickly as fraud, incest, and murder.
There also rose among them the wailing cry of per-
plexity over the good man brought low, the cry of
one who has done his best and yet has been afflicted :
'If I only knew that such things were pleasing before
God ! But that which seems good to a man is
evil before God. Who may understand the counsel
of the gods in heaven ?J

At all events, for him who has been guilty, as
for him who can find in himself no sin, penitence
and abasement can only affect the remainder of his
days on earth. After death the same fate awaits
the evil and the good, and no help for either. Satis-
faction, vengeance, sense-gratification, the pleasures
of daily life and the tranquillising occupations of

1 Zimmern, Babylonische Hymnen, etc., pp. 27, 29. Jastrow,
"A Babylonian Parallel to Job," Journal of Biblical Lit., Vol.
XXV.

10 DELIVERANCE

labour, — all were had in this rich river land ; its ma-
terial welfare and order, the degree of civilisation
there attained, attest the existence of a sufficiency
of practical justice and law-abidingness. But Meso-
I potamia never evolved either a religion, a philosophy,
or an ethical scheme that could lead the human
spirit to freedom or peace.

It may be doubted whether the Egyptians thought
more clearly ; but their temperament was different,
and their lives would seem to have been calm and
stable. All this, however, is no explanation of the
marvels of constructive foolishness, no explanation
whatsoever of the grossly impossible continuation
of life after death, which they fabricated. It is
natural as well as universal not to think of death
as ending all ; the natural man has neither the data
nor a sufficient clarity of mind to reach the notion
of extinction. His impulse is to imagine how the
dead can go on under conditions so obviously changed.
But any elaboration of such imaginings is apt to
bear an inverse relation to his intelligence and power
to discern inconsistencies. The Egyptian fabrica-
tion of a cumulative scheme of life beyond the
tomb was unhampered by any sense of the impos-
sible. Provision for it had to be made on earth,
and the expense was beyond the means of all except
Pharaohs and the great nobles. Pyramids bul-
warked the post-mortem life of Egypt's kings. The
texts within set forth the further means whereby

CHALD^A AND EGYPT n

that existence should be continued and supported,
should be filled with authority, dignity, occupation,
supplied with dainty food and with pleasures dis-
tinctly of the flesh. Every measure was taken to
make the post-mortem life of Pharaoh and his
nobles as luxurious as if they still commanded
countless slaves on earth. Their tombs were fur-
nished with symbolical conveniences, with serving
statuettes, and chapters from the Book of the
Dead, which magically caused these statuettes to
do the work of men in the nether world. The
venal sacerdotal imagination encompassed that sub-
terranean life with dangers at every turn, and even
devised conditions of sinfulness, so that priests and
scribes might also furnish, for a price, charms to
quell the dangers and scrolls to disavow the sinful-
ness, just as Indulgences pertaining to the nether
world were to be bought for money three thousand
years afterwards. Yet during those early Egyp-
tian centuries, a clearer morality introduced rewards
and punishments into the scheme of the life to come.
To some extent, the post-mortem welfare of the
great, and possibly of the lowly, became dependent
on the virtues of their lives on earth.

In this combination of ethical thought with
means magical, religious, or material, for support-
ing life beyond the tomb, lay the most striking Egyp-
tian endeavour to free the human spirit from fear,
and adjust man to the conditions and possibilities

1 2 DELIVERANCE

of his life. As a part of this freeing of the spirit,
Egyptian conceptions of the divine gained ethical
discrimination and universal breadth. The gods,
or the one god for the moment deemed supreme,
would be less capricious if clothed with right and
justice, and could, if omnipotent, bear more effi-
cient aid. A surer sense of peace was won, as men
realised the might of the divine favour, and more
clearly saw, or thought they saw, how it should be
won and held. Their gods were righteous, and
would save the righteous; and their power was
adequate since they, or rather the momentarily
supreme one among them, had come to be conceived
as Lord and Creator not of Egypt alone, but of all
earth's lands, and as supreme also in the world of
the still sentient dead. The final intimate comfort
came with the thought that this eternal Lord and
Maker of Life might also enter the king's heart,
and bring him wisdom and life. God had become
the mother and father of all that he had made, and
had filled Egypt with his love. One king at least,
the revolutionary Amenhotep IV (C. 1375 B.C.),
possessed these thoughts, and could pray that his
eyes might be satisfied daily with beholding Aton
(the supreme and universal Sun-god) when he dawns
in his temple, and fills it with his own self by his
beams, loving and life-giving forever.

The name was nothing. Aton had taken many
of the qualities of Amon and Osiris; and when the

CHALD^EA AND EGYPT

name of Aton was stamped out in the succeeding
reaction, Amon received back from his rival attri-
butes which had once been his, but which in Aton
had come to added grace and power. And then a
last advance was made ; these beautiful conceptions
spread themselves among men, even among those of
low estate, whose lot in by-gone times had been scant
burial and scant equipment for any life thereafter.
Amon had become a god coming to the silent, sav-
ing the poor, listening to the cry of their affliction.
"0 Amon-Re, I love thee and I have filled my
heart with thee. Thou wilt rescue me out of the
mouth of men in the day when they speak lies :
for the Lord of Truth, he liveth in truth." l

1 See Breasted, Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt,
pp. 334, 355 and passim.

CHAPTER II
CHINA: DUTY AND DETACHMENT

/CHINESE meditation, quietism, individualistic
^-^ inaction, as well as the more constructive social
energies of the race, reached personal exemplifica-
tion and classic expression at about the same time
in two remarkable personalities. Lao Tzu and
Confucius were Chinese incarnations of the vita
contemplative and the vita activa, the /?ios flcwp^riKos
and TTpaKTiKos. One might whimsically call them the
Mary and Martha of China.

These two modes of human life may rest on
different motives and assume different forms with
different peoples. The contemplative life may
issue from the detached intellectual temperament,
which is supremely interested in knowing, or it
may issue from brooding aversion to life's more
blatant activities, or from horror over a sinful
world and fearful or loving consecration to one's
own salvation and the God with whom that lies.
The active life may embrace many and diverse in-
tellectual interests, may have religious or secular
aims, may represent devotion to the social fabric
or fierce ambition.

For the sake of clarity one distinguishes these

DUTY AND DETACHMENT 15

tendencies rather sharply, and speaks of them as
opposites. But, of course, they mingle in the same
individuals. Moreover, in every land, those who
exhibit markedly one tendency will have much in
common with those who represent the other, be-
cause of like environment and racial characteristics
underlying the idiosyncrasies of individuals. So
the views of Confucius and Lao Tzu show affinity
as well as opposition. It is better to speak first of
Confucius, because Lao Tzu, although the elder by
some fifty years, embodies a reaction against the
more dominant Chinese qualities represented in the
younger man.1

How did Confucius consider life and his relation-
ship to the world, and set himself to reach such
freedom in thought and corresponding act as he
was capable of ? He may seem a very bounden
man; but he was free, though his freedom lay in
reverent self-adaptation to chains — as they appear
to us. Confucius looked sadly upon the state of
affairs about him, and with admiration on the past
as he read it in that ancient history and poetry
which he tended with such care. He wished to
conform his conduct to the ways of ancient worthies,
and raise the misrule of the Chinese princes to the
measure of the (imagined) government of the an-
cient (imagined) kingdom. In the adjustment of
his conduct, he appears to have been faultless ; and

1 Confucius' birth is securely set at 551 B.C.

1 6 DELIVERANCE

while he realised little of his public purpose, he did
much to prescribe the ideal which China has ever
since revered. His life began with learning, and
continued learning many things, the wisdom of
the ancient sages and the appointed rites and cere-
monies. With this went ceaseless effort to per-
form the rites, and make them the garment of a
character conforming to the Way of Heaven, whose
sure and righteous power presented the ultimate
sanction of conduct, — and so the standard of man's
life-adjustment. It was all established in the nar-
ratives and teaching of the old History : 'The way
of Heaven is to bless the good, and make the bad
miserable"; again, "It was not that Heaven
had any private partiality for the lord of Shang;
it simply gave its favour to pure virtue." And the
old History also taught as an inspiration that
'The glory and tranquillity of a state may arise
from the goodness of one man." l

Accordingly, the entire endeavour of Confucius
was to model his conduct upon the Way of Heaven
as illustrated in the Book of History and the over-
interpreted teaching of the classic Odes. By this
meariT his character would become such that his
life and precepts might tranquillise the land, a re-
sult which might be hoped for, as the Shu King said,
from the goodness of one man.

1 The closing words of the Shu King (the classic Book of His-
tory). Legge's Translation.

DUTY AND DETACHMENT 17

Says Confucius, speaking of the stages of his
progress : "At fifteen my mind was bent on learn-
ing ; at thirty I stood firm ; at forty I had no doubts ;
at fifty I knew the decrees of Heaven; at seventy
I could follow what my heart desired, without
transgressing." 1 So through a long life came his
adjustment, conforming to the most surely sanc-
tioned standards that he could conceive, and bring-
ing with it spiritual peace and freedom.

The contents of this adjustment will be seen to
include an endless series of observances, minute,
meticulous, painful, — the conventions, ceremonies,
rites, controlling the intercourse of society, and
prescribing the ceremonials of marriage, burial,
ancestor worship, worship of Heaven, and pro-
pitiation of all the spirits affecting human lots for
good or ill. These rules of propriety and rites and
ceremonies illustrate the graded distinctions obtain-
ing between Heaven and earth. To know them
and carry them out reverently will mould the char-
acter aright. The finish comes from Music, which
exhibits the Harmony prevailing between earth and
Heaven.2

Thus music and ceremonies supplement each
other, and unite in the Confucian scheme. Within,
the character and will must correspond with the

1 Confucian Analects, II, 4. Legge's Translation.

2 See the great collection of the Li Ki, translated by Legge;
Sacred Books of the East, Vols. 27 and 28.

c

1 8 DELIVERANCE

truth and righteousness of the Way of Heaven.
'The Superior Man in everything considers right-
eousness to be essential. He performs it according
to the rules of propriety — bringing it forth in
humility, completing it in sincerity." He seeks
truth rather than emolument; and is distressed
only at his own shortcomings, not at poverty, ill-
treatment, or death. He seeks friendship with the
upright, not with the glib-tongued ; he finds enjoy-
ment in the study of ceremonies and music, not in
idleness and feasting; he guards himself against
lust, anger, avarice ; he stands in awe of the ordi-
nances of Heaven, of great men, and of the words
of the sages.

Certain disciples suspected that the Master was
obsessed with the learning of many things. Per-
ceiving this, he said: 'Those who know virtue are
few. I seek a unity all-pervading." It was asked
what these words might mean, and the answer came
from one of the disciples: 'The doctrine of our
Master is to be true to the principles of our nature
and the benevolent exercise of them toward others."
The correlated unity of the whole matter is made
to appear in the most comprehensive of Confucian
statements: 'What Heaven has conferred is called
the Nature : an accordance with this Nature is
called the Path ; the regulation of the Path is called
Instruction.

'The Path may not be left for an instant. If it

DUTY AND DETACHMENT 19

could be left, it would not be the Path. On this
account the superior man does not wait till he sees
things, to be cautious, nor till he hears things, to
be apprehensive. . . .

'While there are no stirrings of pleasure, anger,
sorrow, or joy, the mind may be said to be in the
state of Equilibrium. When those feelings have
been stirred, and they act in their due degree, there
ensues what may be called the state of Harmony.
This Equilibrium is the great root, and this Har-
mony is the universal Path.

"Let the states of Equilibrium and Harmony
exist in perfection, and a happy order will prevail
throughout heaven and earth, and all things will
flourish." *

That is to say, these principles, properly filled
out with the accumulated precepts of political and
social wisdom, will, if observed, insure the tran-
quillity of the state and produce correct and reverent
ties between ruler and people, father and son,
husband and wife, elder brother and younger, and
between friend and friend.

Here is presented, not altogether clearly, the
standard and the sanction of Confucius' adjust-
ment of his life to the order of Heaven — which is

1 This is from Chapter I of the Chung Yung, or Doctrine of
the Mean, ascribed to the grandson of Confucius, and recog-
nised as an authoritative statement of the Master's teaching.
Cf. also, ib., II, 8.

20 DELIVERANCE

the aggregate of the divine spontaneously creative
forces and man's share of them which constitutes
his nature. Conformity to Heaven's high ordain-
ments — to the Path — frees the sage from the fear
of all things opposed or irrelevant to these his rules
of conduct. The people also should be kept in like
free conformity ; — they should be instructed in the
rules of propriety and should be led through their
virtue, not coerced by laws. 'The Master said:
'If the people be led by laws, and uniformity be
sought to be given them by punishments, they will
try to avoid the punishment, but will have no sense
of shame. If they be led by virtue, and uniformity
be sought to be given them by the rules of pro-
priety, they will have the sense of shame, and,
moreover, will become good.'

But there was need of exertion on the part of
rulers to keep the people in the Path — that had
been the way of the ancient sage Emperors. Virtu-
ous and energetic ministers should be employed, and
not the useless. Possibly, when all things were well
administered, the ruler himself might gravely and
sedately, without active exertion, occupy his throne.

One observes that this cautious Chinaman, in
his adjustment, did not go beyond the necessary
assurance of his convictions, and refused to discuss
from the religious or metaphysical point of view
the ordinances of Heaven, or death, or the service
of the spirits of the dead. Such matters did not

DUTY AND DETACHMENT 21

fall within the needs of his personal adjustment,
nor within the needs of his mission to his land.

Turning now to Taoism, and observing what its
doctrines had in common with the system of Con-
fucius, one notices first the name. That was taken
from the broad Confucian, or rather Chinese, con-
ception of the Tao, — meaning the Path, the Way
or Method. While retaining these meanings, Tao
also drew to itself in the thought of Lao Tzu and
Chuang Tzu (perhaps his greater follower) a com-
plementary meaning, that of the universal power,
to wit, "Heaven" or nature spontaneously creative
— of which Tao is the Way. Likewise the Tao of
man and beast might be not only the Way but also
the Nature of man and beast. Then, through a
suppression of distinctions or a union of contraries,
Tao became an obscurely conceived Absolute.
Neither Confucianism nor Taoism had any definite
conception of a God above Nature and distinct
from it; although both drew current notions of
invisible spirit-existences or influences from the
common fund of Chinese superstition and tradition.
Both systems emphasized the effect of virtue and
character, — the exertionless influence of the sage.
But, besides this, Confucius taught the regular
efficiency of action and exertion 'on the sage's part,
while Lao Tzu insisted on despising it.

To Confucius the web of proprieties was nearly
all in all ; while Lao Tzu relied /consistently on the

22 ' DELIVERANCE

inherent virtue of the Tao. Thus it was that the
former held fast to the thought (so replete with the
'( proprieties") of reciprocity: Do not, of course,
do ill to any man; but recompense goodness with
goodness, and evil with justice, — the last thought
may sanction punishment if not revenge. But
Lao Tzu, holding fast to the goodness of the Tao,
would treat evil with goodness, of a mild and pass-
ive sort, one may imagine ; and would not take up
the foolish way of exertion in order to punish the
evil-doer. It fell in with Taoism to emphasise the
passive virtues of gentleness and humility, approved
likewise by Confucius. Beyond this, the inaction
and indifference of Taoism proceeded easily along the
lofty, somewhat scornful, path of the obliteration of
differences and identification of opposites.

One may contemplate with advantage and
amusement the manner of the life-adjustments of
Lao Tzu, and Chuang Tzu, who stand to each other,
only with more generations between, as Socrates to
Plato. Lao Tzu, a deliciously enigmatic person,
appears, if Taoist sources may be trusted, to have
quite dumfounded Confucius in a most improbable
interview; he left a composition since called the
Tao-te-King, of which, however, his authorship has
been strenuously denied. The work represents at
all events the more amorphous strata of Taoist
doctrine, and one may as well ascribe it to this
incomprehensible dragon of a Lao Tzu. The trans-

DUTY AND DETACHMENT 2;

lations vary ; 1 and no man knows what Lao Tzi
meant by Tao. Doubtless he himself did no
know, a fact to comfort us and lead to better under
standing on our part. Whatever we make of Tao
the book represents an adjustment of an individua
to his world, with thoughts touching the fussines
of men over the unimportant. It also is as a hal
of echoes, where one catches mocking notes o
Brahma, of Heracleitus, or of Jesus.

Lao Tzu, like Confucius, lived when China was ;
group of disorderly and often hostile states. Pas
and present were in his mind. Had there not beei
in the foretime plenty of sage rulers and energetii
ministers, all benevolently inclined ? What hac
come of it but this confusion ? Confucius (if La(
Tzu ever heard of him) with his well-meaning anc
tedious efforts at reform, might seem to crown <
line of futile endeavourers. Perhaps it was all ;
mistake to try to control the people. Since coercior
brought evil, why not try the opposite method o
leaving men to the virtue of their inherent nature
After all, what did it matter ? Why not muse ir
peace and quiet, contemplating this basic humar
nature which was good ?

Lao Tzu is a puzzle. If one could be certain thai
the Tao-te-King is his ! and if its translators onh

1 Notice those by Legge (Sacred Books of the East, Vol
XXXIX), by de Harlez in Annales de la Musee Guimet, and b]
Dr. Paul Carus (Open Court Pub. Co., Chicago, 1898).

24 DELIVERANCE

agreed a little better ! We may be inclined to won-
der whether in the Tao-te-King the Chinese musing
spirit was not assisted by the spirit of the vine, a
very frequent aid to meditation in those old times.
These are queer sentences: "I alone appear listless
and still, as if my desires had not dawned ; like an
infant which has not yet smiled ; dejected, forlorn,
like one who has no home. I seem to be drifting
on the sea." This drifter knew at least to what
he would not tie himself, or direct his course by. It
should not be action, action taken with the purpose
of getting things, or impressing or compelling other
men. There had been too much of that ! What
had the ruler's meddling ever brought but lawless-
ness ? And as for coercion, as for war — after an
army, briars and thorns spring up ! Did some far
tradition come to Lao Tzu that the great sage-
rulers of the imagined past had done nothing, and
under them the people had thriven in blissful igno-
rance that there was a government ? As he tested
kindred thoughts in his own case, the principle of
inaction, with passivity, proved itself valid. He
found his kingdom within him : — without going
abroad, one understands; no need to look out of
the window to see the Tao of Heaven. "Let us
go," said someone, "and wander over the world."
"No," replied Lao Tzu, "the world is just as you see
it here."

Indeed, what is the use of learning many things ?

DUTY AND DETACHMENT 25

Better discard such knowledge and restless wisdom.
It is the softest thing that overcomes the hardest.
The advantage lies with inaction. Let one be as
humble and non-assertive as water, always taking
the lowest place.

A thoughtful man seeks to rest his temperamental
convictions upon some absolute principle, at once
sure and sufficing. Lao Tzu found such in an eternal
unchanging root within the nature of man and
behind the ways of Earth and Heaven. Thereupon
all things became for him fundamentally the same,
fundamentally one. Differences were but surface
foolishness ; complete inaction with respect to them
approved itself as life's true rule. One can almost
feel him groping after this changeless first beginning
and eternal principle of all things, thus perhaps :
'There was something undefined and complete,
coming into existence before Heaven and Earth.
How still it was and formless, standing alone, and
undergoing no change, reaching everywhere and
exhaustless. It may be regarded as the Mother of
all things. I do not know its name, and I give it
the designatipn of the Tao. . . . Man takes his
law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from
Heaven; Heaven from the Tao. The law of the
Tao is its being what it is." 1

1 Tao-te-King, 25. Is not this a far-off pre-natal echo of
the One of Plotinus ? The translator (Legge) felt doubtful
of the last sentences.

26 DELIVERANCE

Therein lay mystery, unapproachable, ineffable,
not to be imparted. As the goodness of doing good
is not the real good, so the Tao that can be attained,
that can be trodden as the Path, is not the endur-
ing and unchanging Tao. Evidently the name that
can be named cannot be the name of the Enduring
and Unchanging. This cannot be known and
named so distinguishably : things distinguishable
and namable are not the Tao.

Producing all things, the Tao strives not, cloth-
ing all as with a garment, yet not asserting itself as
Lord ; existing alike in the smallest and the greatest.
Out of weakness, strength; thus it proceeds by
contraries. Heaven and Earth, its grand embodi-
ments, do not act from benevolence. They do not
strive, yet always overcome ; the meshes of Heaven's
net are large, but let nothing escape. It lessens
abundance, it supplements deficiency. Heaven
shows no favour ; it is always on the side of the good
man.

Likewise the sage, says Lao Tzu, he who knows
and holds the eternal Tao, will show no nepotism.
The good he will meet with good, and what else
has he within him with which to meet the bad ?
To embody and imitate the Tao was Lao Tzu's per-
sonal adjustment. As touching his effect on other
men, Tao-like he would proceed by contraries,
making no effort, renouncing sageness, discarding
benevolence.

DUTY AND DETACHMENT 27

The Tao's way is plain — but the people love
by-paths. The sage shall not even try to teach those
in whom there may be no place for truth. He will
do nothing, and the people will be transformed of
themselves. All definitely directed effort departs
from the purposeless indistinguishable effectiveness
of Tao, and will result in the opposite of what is
willed: out of law, lawlessness; out of the pro-
prieties, disorder.

Not very clear and perhaps foolish, much of this
Tao-te-King! Perhaps we have been barking up
the wrong tree in following Lao Tzu, and the real
game for us is Chuang Tzu after all — not Socrates
but Plato. At all events, in Chuang Tzu, Chinese
musing and indifference has metaphysical depth and
wayward charm; he is not merely a puzzle, but a
delight.

Artist as well as metaphysician, Chuang Tzu in his
dialogues gives his arguments to various worthies,
putting them even in the mouth of a somewhat
apocryphal Confucius. In this he shares the faculty
(one feels incompetent to proceed further with the
comparison) of a Plato. One is embarrassed by his
riches and his waywardness. He has also proved a
hard nut to scholars,1 and to the Chinese them-

1 There are two English translations made with ripe knowledge ;
that of Legge in Vols. 39 and 40, Sacred Books of the East, and
that of Herbert A. Giles (Quaritch, 1889). One who does not
know Chinese may at least enjoy the delightful charm of the

28 DELIVERANCE

selves, for whom he is more heretic than orthodox.
He lived from the fourth into the third century
before Christ, and a century or two later a Chinese
historian compared his teachings to a flood which
spreads at its own sweet will; consequently none
could apply them to any definite use; they were
too far-reaching. Long after, at the close of the
Ming period, a Chinese commentator speaks ap-
positely of his style: "The sudden statement and
the sudden proof; the sudden illustration and the
sudden reasoning; the decision, made to appear as
no decision ; the connexion, now represented as
no connexion; the repetition, turning out to be no
repetition : — these features come and go in the
paragraphs like the clouds in the open firmament,
changing every moment and delightful to behold.
Some one describes it well: 'the guiding thread
in the unspun floss; the snake sleeping in the
grass.'"1

Chuang Tzu proceeds from Lao Tzu, or at all events
represents a further stage in the progress of Chinese
quietism and its justification. He stands upon the
adjustment reached by his Master, but there he
does not rest. The basis of this adjustment is the
Tao. More clearly than his predecessor, Chuang Tzu

latter. It is the one from which I have taken my extracts,
though with qualms over the differences between Prof. Giles and
Dr. Legge.

1 From Legge, Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 40, p. 275.

DUTY AND DETACHMENT 29

shows the Tao to be the transcendental root and core
of oneness beneath the apparent manifold of exist-
ence, and also the Norm of living for every creature.
With this conception of Tao as his basis, he shows
the relativity of qualities and the subjectivity of
concepts, also the folly of applying the measure of
one thing to the being or action of another. Pro-
ceeding further, he discloses the Identity of Con-
traries, and posits as a working principle the sup-
pression of the silly phenomenal self with its passions
and desires, while he establishes the real eternal
Self as one with the Tao.1 Thus Chuang Tzu's
adjustment, compared with Lao Tzu's, elaborates the
identification of Self with the Tao, and the identi-
fication of right living with the ways of the Tao's
aimless omnipotence.

These principles may be trite, their discussion
somewhat banal. But they came to Chuang Tzu
with the freshness of dawn, and made the matter
of delightful argument and the stimulus of dreams
dreamed with a purpose. Through this picturesque
argumentation let us track, if we can, his adjust-
ment with life.

The monstrous Roc flying high above the earth
is as a mote in the sunbeam : after this and other
illustrations of the subjective relativity of times and
magnitudes, the argument turns to the identity of

1 He reaches something like the conception of the Atman
Brahman in the Upanishads. Cf. post, Chapter III.

30 DELIVERANCE

Subjective and Objective, the one emanating from
the other; then to the blending of apparent con-
traries, which merge in an infinite One.

"Separation is the same as construction; con-
struction is the same as destruction. Nothing is
subject either to construction or to destruction, for
these conditions are brought together into One.
Only the truly intelligent understand this principle
of the identity of all things. . . . But to wear out
one's intellect in an obstinate adherence to the in-
dividuality of things, this is called Three in the
morning"

'What is Three in the morning?" exclaims someone.

"A keeper of monkeys, " replies the speaker,
"said with regard to their rations of chestnuts that
each monkey was to have three in the morning and
four at night. But at this the monkeys were very
angry, so the keeper said they might have four in
the morning and three at night; with which ar-
rangement they were all well pleased. The actual
number of the chestnuts remained the same, but
there was an adaptation to the likes and dislikes of
those concerned. Such is the principle of putting
oneself into subjective relation with externals."

'There is nothing, " continues the speaker after
further interrogatories, "under the canopy of heaven
greater than the tip of an autumn spikelet. A vast
mountain is a small thing. Neither is there any age
greater than that of a child cut off in infancy.

DUTY AND DETACHMENT 31

The universe and I came into being together; and
I and everything therein are One."

At the end, the argument bathes in the mystery
of life : 'The revolutions of ten thousand years
leave the Sage's Unity unscathed. . . . How do
I know that love of life is not a delusion after all ?
How do I know but that he who dreads to die is
not as a child who has lost the way and cannot find
his home ? . . . Some will even interpret the
very dream they are dreaming; and only when
they awake do they know it was a dream. By and
by comes the Great Awakening, and then we find
out that this life is really a great dream. Fools
think they are awake now, and flatter themselves
they know if they are really princes or peasants.
Confucius and you are both dreams; and I who
say you are dreams, — I am but a dream myself.
. . . Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt I
was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither. I was
conscious only of following my fancies as a butter-
fly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a
man. Suddenly I awaked, and there I lay, myself
again. Now I do not know whether I was then a
man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am
now a butterfly dreaming I am a man."

So much for relativity and the futility of apparent
contraries, and so much for the mystery of it all.
Chuang Tzu offers a different illustration of the
folly of conventional human judgements in a chap-

32 DELIVERANCE

ter beginning thus: "It was the time of autumn
floods. Every stream poured into the river which
swelled in its turbid course. The banks receded
so far from one another that it was impossible
to tell a cow from a horse. Then the Spirit of
the River laughed for joy that all the beauty of
the earth was gathered to himself. Down with the
stream he journeyed east, until he reached the
ocean. There, looking eastwards and seeing no
limit to its waves, his countenance changed. And
as he gazed over the expanse, he sighed and said
to the Spirit of the Ocean, 'A vulgar proverb says
that he who has heard but part of the truth thinks
no one equal to himself. And such a one am I. . . .'

"To which the Spirit of the Ocean replied, 'You
cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog, the creature
of a narrower sphere. You cannot speak of ice to
a summer insect, the creature of a season. You
cannot speak of Tao to a pedagogue ; his scope is
too restricted. But now that you have emerged
from your narrow sphere and have seen the great
ocean, I can speak to you of great principles."
He then explains how vast the ocean is, and how tri-
fling a thing it is in the Universe. But man, as com-
pared with all creation, is as the tip of a hair upon a
horse's skin.

'Very well," replied the Spirit of the River,
"am I then to regard the universe as great and the
tip of a hair as small ?"

DUTY AND DETACHMENT 3^

"Not at all," said the Spirit of the Ocean. "Di
mensions are limitless ; time is endless. Condition:
are not invariable; terms are not final. Thus th<
wise man looks into space, and does not regard th<
small as too little, nor the great as too much : foi
he knows that there is no limit to dimension. H<
looks back into the past, and does not grieve ove:
what is far off, nor rejoice over what is near, for h<
knows that time is without end. He investigate;
fulness and decay, and does not rejoice if he sue
ceeds, nor lament if he fails; for he knows thai
conditions are not invariable. He who clearly
apprehends the scheme of existence, does not re-
joice over life, nor pine at death ; for he knows thai
terms are not final."

The great man acts differently from others, bui
takes no credit, nor does he despise those who aci
otherwise. "Perfect virtue acquires nothing; the
truly great man ignores self; this is the height oi
self-discipline. . . . From the point of view of Tac
[the Spirit of the Ocean is speaking] there are nc
extremes of value or worthlessness. Men indi-
vidually value themselves and hold others cheap
The world collectively withholds from the individual
the right of appraising himself.

"If we say that a thing is great or small because
it is relatively great or small, then there is nothing
in all creation which is not great, nothing which ij
not small. ... If we say that anything is good

D

34 DELIVERANCE

or evil because it is either good or evil in our eyes,
then there is nothing which is not good, nothing
which is not evil. . . ."

"One might as well talk of the existence of
heaven without that of earth, or of the negative
principle without the positive. . . . Rulers have
abdicated under different conditions, dynasties
have been continued under different conditions.
Those who did not hit off a favourable time and
were in opposition to their age, they were called
usurpers. Those who did hit off the right time and
were in harmony with their age, they were called
patriots. Fair and softly, my River Friend; what
should you know of value and worthlessness, of
great and small ?>J

"In this case," replied the Spirit of the River,
"what am I to do and what am I not to do ? How
am I to arrange my declinings and receivings, my
takings-hold and my lettings-go ?>j

"From the point of view of Tao," said the Spirit
of the Ocean, :{ value and worthlessness are like
slopes and plains. . . . Tao is without beginning,
without end. Other things are born and die.
They are impermanent; and now for better, now
for worse, they are ceaselessly changing form.
Past years cannot be recalled ; time cannot be
arrested. The succession of states is endless ; and
every end is followed by a new beginning. Thus
it may be said that man's duty to his neighbour

DUTY AND DETACHMENT 35

is embodied in the eternal principles of the uni-
verse.

'The life of man passes by like a galloping horse
changing at every turn, at every hour. What should
he do, other than let his decomposition go on ?>!

"If this is the case," retorted the Spirit of the
River, 'pray what is the value of Tao ?'

'Those who understand Tao," answered the
Spirit of the Ocean, "must necessarily apprehend
the eternal principles above mentioned and be cleai
as to their application. Consequently, they do nol
suffer injury from without."

Much knowledge is a curse ; one should know the
inner principles. Chuang Tzu states his underlying
doctrine thus : "At the beginning of the beginning
even Nothing did not exist. Then came the perioc
of the Nameless. When One came into existence
there was One, but it was formless. When thing!
got that by which they came into existence, it was
called their virtue. That which was formless, bui
divided (i.e. allotted), though without interstice
(unbroken in continuity) was called Destiny
Then came the movement which gave life, and thing;
produced in accordance with the principles of lif<
had what is called Form. When form enclose
the spiritual part, each with its own characteristics
that is called its nature. By cultivating this nature
we are carried back to virtue; and if this is per
fected, we become as all things were in the begin

36 DELIVERANCE

ning. We become unconditioned, and the uncon-
ditioned is great."

Chuang Tzu, like Lao Tzu, represents the human
need to grope for a foundation, upon which to
stand with certainty of soul and freedom of action.
When it is found, reliance upon one's principles is
all that is needed, and acquiescence. Chuang Tzu
sums up his own acquiescence (which was his ad-
justment to life) in a phrase several times repeated :
'Tao gives me this form, this toil in manhood, this
repose in old age, this rest in death. And surely
that which is such a kind arbiter of my life is the
best arbiter of my death."

Evidently one should immerse oneself in that
essential virtue which lies far beneath the active
manifestations of social relationships. This will be
to keep oneself out of the web of conventional
duties, free to muse and think and live within one-
self and Tao. More fundamentally still it will
consist in looking within for the real Tao-accordant
Self, and in throwing off the passions and desires
of the Self's surface entanglements. Such a life
and such a Self will for the world express itself in
categories of inaction.

This philosopher can put his principles pic-
turesquely : When Chuang Tzu's wife died, a friend
went to console, and found "the widower sitting on
the ground, singing, with his legs spread out at a
right angle, and beating time on a bowl." The

DUTY AND DETACHMENT 37

friend thinks self-restraint well enough, but this it
going too far.

"Not at all," replied Chuang Tzu; "when she
died, I could not help being affected by her death
Soon, however, I remembered that she had ahead}
existed in a previous state before birth, without
form or even substance; that while in that uncon-
ditioned condition, substance was added to spirit
that this substance then assumed form; and thai
the next stage was birth. And now by virtue of <
further change she is dead, passing from one phase
to another like the sequence of spring, summer
autumn, and winter. And while she is thus lying
asleep in Eternity, for me to go about weeping anc
wailing would be to proclaim myself ignorant o:
these natural laws. Therefore I refrain."

Doubtless Chuang Tzu also had temperamenta
preference for the principles which he held, — anc
loved his freedom. He "was fishing in the Pi
when the prince of Chu sent two high officials t(
ask him to take charge of the Chu State. Chuang
Tzu went on fishing, and without turning his heac
said, 'I have heard that in Chu there is a sacrec
tortoise which has been dead some three thousanc
years, and that the prince keeps this tortoise care
fully enclosed in a chest on the altar of his ancestra
temple. Now would this tortoise rather be deac
and have its remains venerated, or be alive am
wagging its tail in the mud ?'

38 DELIVERANCE

'It would rather be alive,' replied the two
officials, 'and wagging its tail in the mud.'

'Begone !' cried Chuang Tzu. 'I too will wag
my tail in the mud.''

Likewise Lao Tzu (in Chuang Tzu's book) shows
explosively that virtue lies deeper than practice :
" Confucius visited Lao Tzu, and spoke of charity
and duty to one's neighbour. Lao Tzu said, 'The
chaff from winnowing will blind a man's eyes so
that he cannot tell the north from south. Mos-
quitoes will keep a man awake all night with their
biting. And just in the same way this talk of
charity and duty to one's neighbour drives me nearly
crazy. Sir ! I strive to keep the world to its own
original simplicity. And as the wind bloweth where
it listeth, so let Virtue establish itself. Wherefore
such undue energy, as though searching for a fugi-
tive with a big drum ?'

These philosophers not only believed, but reasoned
in accordance with their principles, that "for the
perfect man who is unavoidably summoned to power,
there is naught like Inaction." This is how Chuang
Tzu has Lao Tzu put it, when asked how men's
hearts are to be kept in order without government :
'Be careful," replied Lao Tzu, "not to interfere
with the natural goodness of the heart of man.
Man's heart may be forced down or stirred up. In
each case the issue is fatal. By gentleness, the
hardest heart may be softened. But try to cut and

DUTY AND DETACHMENT

polish it, — 'twill glow like fire or freeze like ice
In the twinkling of an eye it will pass beyond th<
limits of the Four Seas. No bolt can bar, no bom
can bind, — such is the human heart.

"Of old, the Yellow Emperor first caused charitj
and duty to one's neighbour to interfere with th<
natural goodness of the heart of man. In conse
quence of which, Yao and Shun wore the hair o£
their legs in endeavouring to feed their people
They disturbed their internal economy in order t(
find room for charity and duty to one's neighbour
They exhausted their energies in framing laws anc
statutes. Still they did not succeed." They en
deavoured to coerce evil men, but the Empire con
tinued in unrest. 'By and by the Confucianisti
and the Mihists [another very moral sect] arose
and then came exultation, and anger of rivals
fraud between the simple and the cunning, recrimi
nation between the virtuous and the evil, slande]
between the honest and the dishonest, until deca
dence set in, men fell away from their original virtue
their natures became corrupt, and there was a genera
rush for knowledge.

'The next thing was to coerce by all kinds o!
physical torture, thus bringing utter confusion intc
the Empire, the blame for which rests upon those
who would interfere with the natural goodness oi
the heart of man. In consequence, virtuous mer
sought refuge in mountain caves, while rulers oi

40 DELIVERANCE

States sat trembling in their ancestral halls. Then
when dead men lay about pillowed on each other's
corpses, when cangued prisoners and condemned
criminals jostled each other in crowds, then the
Confucianists and the Mihists, in the midst of
gyves and fetters, stood forth to preach! . . .
Therefore I said, abandon wisdom and discard
knowledge, and the Empire will be at peace."

Our old friend Lao Tzu had a fit disciple, who
" alone had attained to the Tao of his master. He
lived up north on the Wei-lei Mountains. Of his
attendants he dismissed those who were systemati-
cally clever or conventionally charitable. The
useless remained with him ; the incompetent served
him. And in three years the district of Wei-lei
was greatly benefited."

A final statement of the matter perhaps is touched
with a slight sneer: 'The difficulty of governing
lies in the inability to practise self-effacement."

Likewise for the individual; let him too prac-
tise self-effacement, effacement, that is to say, of
particular desires, passions, anxieties, and efforts.
Chuang Tzu illuminates this with one of his best
narrative-disquisitions : A wise man with an un-
rememberable name 'paid a visit to the prince of
Lu. The latter wore a melancholy look; where-
upon the philosopher inquired what was the cause.

'"I study the doctrines of the ancient Sages/
replied the prince, 'I carry on the work of my pred-

DUTY AND DETACHMENT 41

ecessors. I respect religion. I honour the good.
Never for a moment do I relax in these points ; yet
I cannot avoid misfortune, and consequently I am
sad.'

'Your Highness' method of avoiding misfor-
tune,' said the philosopher, 'is but a shallow one.
A handsome fox or a striped leopard will live in a
mountain forest, hiding beneath some cliff. This
is their repose. They come out by night and keep
in by day. This is their caution. Though under
the stress of hunger and thirst, they lie hidden,
hardly venturing to slink to the river bank in search
of food. This is their resoluteness. Nevertheless,
they do not escape the misfortune of the net and the
trap. But what crime have they committed ?
'Tis their skin which is the cause of their trouble;
and is not the State of Lu your Highness' skin ? I
would have your Highness put away body and skin
alike, and cleansing your heart and purging it of
passion, betake yourself to the land where mortality
is not (i.e. Tao). . . . Thither would I have your
Highness proceed, power discarded, and the world
left behind, only putting trust in Tao.'

'The road is long and dangerous,' said the
prince. 'Rivers and hills to be crossed, and I with-
out boat or chariot; — what then ?'

'Unhindered by body and unfettered in mind,
your Highness will be a chariot to yourself.'

"'But the road is long and dreary, and unin-

DELIVERANCE

habited. I shall have no one to turn to for help;
and how, without food, shall I ever be able to get
there?'"

"'Decrease expenditure (of energy) and lessen
desires,' answered the philosopher, ' and even though
without provisions, there will be enough. And
then through river and over sea your Highness will
travel into shoreless illimitable space. From the
borderland, those who act as escort will return;
but thence onwards your Highness will travel far.
It is the human in ourselves which is our hindrance ;
and the human in others which causes sorrow.
And I would have your Highness put off this hin-
drance and rid yourself of this sorrow, and roam
with Tao alone through the realms of Infinite
Nought.'"

It is also taught consistently in Chuang Tzu's
book that neither man's life nor his individuality
is his own, being in either case the delegated har-
mony and adaptability of the spiritual powers con-
stituting it.

"Man passes through this sublunary life as a
white horse passes a crack. Here one moment,
gone the next. One modification brings life; then
another, and it is death. Living creatures cry out ;
human beings sorrow. The bow-sheath is slipped
off; the clothes-bag is dropped; and in the con-
fusion the soul wings its flight, and the body fol-
lows, on the great journey home!

DUTY AND DETACHMENT 43

'The reality of the formless, the unreality of
that which has form, — this is known to all. Those
who are on the road to attainment care not for these
things, but the people at large discuss them. At-
tainment implies non-discussion ! Manifested, Tao
has no objective value ; hence silence is better than
argument. It cannot be translated into speech;
better, then, say nothing at all. This is called the
great attainment."

Much of this argumentation, if such it be, or
personal adjustment, has meaning and appeal, or
has it not, according as one may take it, or perhaps,
according as one is constituted. Thus it may be
either appealing or foolish. The way lies near to
an exposition of the real Self which might seem to
have come out of the Indian Upanishads : 'That
Self is eternal ; yet all men think it mortal ; That
Self is infinite ; yet all men think it finite. Those
who possess Tao are princes in this life and rulers
in the hereafter. Those who do not possess Tao
behold the light of day in this life, and become
clods of earth in the hereafter."

One sees that Chuang Tzu's philosophy is held
within his adjustment with life. The philosopher
himself is still human, can recognize half humorously
his own imbecility and occasional falling away from
his principles, as in this story : Wandering in a
park, he saw a strange bird with great wings, which
flew close past his head to alight in a chestnut grove.

44 DELIVERANCE

"What manner of bird is this ?'' cried Chuang
Tzu. "With strong wings it does not fly away;
with large eyes it does not see."

So he picked up his skirts and strode towards
it with his cross-bow, anxious to get a shot. Just
then he saw a cicada enjoying itself in the shade,
forgetful of all else. And he saw a mantis spring
and seize it, forgetting in its act its own body,
which the strange bird immediately pounced upon
and made its prey. And this it was which had
caused the bird to forget its own nature.

"Alas !" cried Chuang Tzu with a sigh, /'how
creatures injure one another. Loss follows the pur-
suit of gain." So he laid aside his bow and went
home, driven away by the parkkeeper, who wanted
to know what business he had there.

After this he did not quit his house for three
months, till a disciple, wondering, asked why.
"While keeping my physical frame," replied Chuang
Tzu, "I lost sight of my real self. Gazing at muddy
water, I lost sight of the clear abyss. Now when I
strolled into the park, I forgot my real self. That
strange bird which flew close past me to the chest-
nut grove, forgot its nature. The keeper of the
chestnut grove took me for a thief. Consequently
I have not been out."

No, he had rather dwell within his house, within
himself. How clearly he could lay aside non-
essentials and cast himself upon the elements of his

DUTY AND DETACHMENT 45

being, is shown in the final scene : 'When Chuang
Tzu was about to die, his disciples expressed a
wish to give him a splendid funeral. But Chuang
Tzu said, 'With Heaven and Earth for my coffin
and shell, with the sun, moon and stars as my burial
regalia; and with all creation to escort me to the
grave, — are not my funeral paraphernalia ready to
hand ?'

'We fear/ argued the disciples, 'lest the carrion
kite should eat the body of our master' ; to which,
Chuang Tzu replied, 'Above ground, I shall be
food for kites; below, I shall be food for mole-
crickets and ants. Why rob one to feed the other ?'

Thus it was for this man who knew: " Birth
is not a beginning; death is not an end. There
is existence without limitation; there is continuity
without a starting point. Existence without limi-
tation is Space. Continuity without a starting
point is Time. There is birth, there is death, there
is issuing forth, there is entering in. That through
which one passes in and out without seeing its form,
that is the Portal of God — which is non-existence,
from which all things spring."

As certain also of your own poets have said :

" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting."

CHAPTER III
THE INDIAN ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY

TNDIAN thinking is driven by a temperamental
•*• need of adjustment with the Infinite, and by a
temperamental aversion for the incessant round of
life and death. The adjustments attained were
shaped through a tenacious dialectic; yet they
were impelled by the Indian yearning for emanci-
pation from impermanence and recurrent death.
By the close of the fifth century before Christ,
cognate and complementary solutions had been
reached, which were religious and also metaphysical.
These solutions affected the spiritual destinies of
Asia. They were, moreover, in their intellectual
bearings representative of the opposite positions
regarding men and things in which philosophers in
various lands have always tended to range them-
selves. The Brahman-Atman doctrines of the
Upanishads and the teachings of Buddhism which
seemingly rose out of them, by the way of dissent if
not of revolution, present opposite poles of thought;
The Brahman pole points to an Absolute All-One,
empirically unknowable, but felt religiously, and dem-
onstrated as metaphysical verity. Vaguely it was

46

ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 47

to be lived unto as a religious goal, and patterned
upon as a norm of conduct. The Buddhist solution
refused assent to any Absolute, which of a cer-
tainty could not be found in the changing world
and the passing experience of man.

Yet transience and change were as intolerable to
one Indian phase of thought as to the other; and
the Buddha preaches emancipation from phe-
nomenal life as earnestly as if behind there lay an
Absolute instead of Nought. But these opposite
poles in India are not in all respects distinguishable.
The Absolute of the Upanishads does not differ
practically from Nought, but only metaphysically.
In other systems, however, away from India,
Being or the Supreme Being is the antithesis of
Nought in many further modes, and one may fruit-
fully reflect upon the different motives, the differ-
ent processes, and the different goals of supreme
desire, or its seeming renunciation, which have
drawn men to one conclusion or the other in com-
pany, shall we say, with Yajnavalkya or Gotama,
with Plato or Heracleitus, with Christ or with
Apollyon.

There have always been men to despise or con-
demn the lures of life, although their condemnation
has proceeded along different lines of misprisal.
Some have been moved by fear of sin, some by the
sorrow of impermanence, and some by contempt
for whatever does not share in the steadfastness of

48 DELIVERANCE

the conceptions of the mind. The Indian mis-
prisal united the last two reasons, and was a thing
of mood as well as thought. Conversely, the higher
Indian modes of spiritual freedom were harmonies
of mood and argument.

After what one is prone to call the Vedic age of
probable Aryan advance and conquest in India,
the thoughtful men of the succeeding generations
gave themselves over to profound, if not the happiest,
meditation. The remark of the Greek observer
Megasthenes, who visited India in the train of
Alexander, that the Indian sages, — forest dwellers
he calls them — think much on death, would have
applied centuries before his time. Many of those
temperamentally motived philosophic treatises which
are called Upanishads and are attached as appen-
dices and reconsiderations to the Vedic literature,
are earlier than the fifth century before Christ,
presumably and probably, for dates are never cer-
tain in India. They consider death inordinately (as
we might say, if we chose to forget our own monkish
literature), and present the ancient Brahmanical
adjustment of the human spirit — with life and
the universe ? yes, perhaps ; but it were more to
the point to speak of this adjustment as an emanci-
pation of the soul from death, and constantly re-
curring death.

To anyone who would extract a system from
them, these Upanishads will prove tangled paths.

ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 49

Yet the topics of discussion throughout are much
the same, and the general tenor of the solutions.
There is frequent dialogue, question and answer,
with you«.hs and kings and Brahmans for speakers.
It would be interesting, were it justifiable, to attach
the argumentation to the name of some ancient and
dramatic Brahman, like Yajnavalkya. And per-
haps it may be well to follow closely some instance
of his dramatic arguments, if only to illustrate
vividly the point that the Upanishads form a huge
attempt, or series of attempts, to bring peace and
freedom to the anxious human spirit, emancipate
the soul from death, and possibly win for it eternal
felicity.

Belief in the transmigration of souls is either
inculcated or assumed. Therefore the soul has to
be freed from its torment of rebirth and redeath.
This goal is reached through mazes of symbolism
and metaphysics intended to establish the Absolute
All-One, and identify the Soul, the Self, with It, —
the Atman with Brahman. For the Atman is this
Absolute Self within each one of us, if we will but
know it ; and Brahma, a word which in the Vedas
had meant prayer, has at length through turns of
monstrous symbolism and subjectivity, been trans-
formed to that prayer which has worked its own
fulfilment, which has not merely reached but has
become its own uttermost desire, the unchanging
and imperishable Absolute. The Self is That;

E

50 DELIVERANCE

That is the Self; and beyond it there is Nought;
only Maya, the delusion of Name and Form.

This Absolute is to be attained through enlighten-
ment; by knowing it and desiring nothing else.
But can it be known ? Yes and no. It cannot be
known by observation, perhaps not in consciousness
in any way. Will the path of cumulative predica-
tion lead to It ? — It is this, and that and every-
thing, the One within the Many: and this, and
that, and everything art Thou. Negation may
prove the surer way; for neither that, nor this nor
anything is It. It cannot be known through rest-
less tossings, but only dreamlessly. Where then is
consciousness ? Has that too vanished in this
dreamless knowledge ? He who has realized Brah-
man, and that the Self is It, for him there will be
no desire in this life, and no rebirth unto redeath;
for him it will be true, as Yajnavalkya declares :
"There is no consciousness after death."

Listen to Yajnavalkya speaking with his wife
Maitreyi, as he is about to enter the final seclusion
of the forest ; he will divide his goods between her
and another wife. Maitreyi stops him: "If the
wealth of the whole earth belonged to me, would it
make me immortal ? '

"No," replied Yajnavalkya,V'like the life of rich
people will be thy life; there is no hope of im-
mortality by wealth."

"What should I do with that by which I do not

ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 51

become immortal ? That which my Lord knoweth,
tell to me."

Yajnavalkya replied: "Come, thou that art
truly dear to me, sit down and I will explain it to
thee. Verily a husband is dear not for the hus-
band's sake, but for the Self's sake : likewise wife,
sons, kingdoms, the world and all the gods, these
are dear, not for their own, but for the Self's sake ;
in order that thou mayest love the Self alone. We
should meditate upon the Self. He who has seen,
heard and known the Self, knows the Universe.
He who looks for anything save in the Self will be
deluded, — as if he should seek for the notes of
lute or drum beyond the instrument producing
them ! And as when a fire is laid with damp wood,
clouds of smoke are spread around, so from this
great Being has all knowledge and doctrine been
breathed forth. It is the meeting-place of all
forms, as waters meet in the ocean, sounds in the
ear, colours in the eye, and perceptions in the mind.
And as a lump of salt, dissolved in water, cannot be
taken out, and the water will always taste salt, so
this great Being which is all knowledge, vanishes in
the elements from which it rises. There is no con-
sciousness after death."

"Now thou hast bewildered me," said Maitreyi.

"O Maitreyi, I say nothing that is bewildering.
For when there is as it were duality, then one sees
the other, one smells the other, one hears the other,

52 DELIVERANCE

one salutes the other, one perceives and knows the
other. But when the Self is all this, how should
He see another, hear another, salute another, or
perceive and know another ? How should He
know Him by whom He knows all this ? That
Self is to be described by No, No ! He is incom-
prehensible, for he cannot be comprehended; he
cannot perish; he does not attach himself; un-
fettered, he does not suffer. How, O beloved, should
he know the knower ? Thus, O Maitreyi, thou hast
been instructed." When he had thus spoken,
Yajnavalkya went away into the forest.1

Note the "as it were'3 of this last passage —
duality, manifoldness, only as it were, not really.
The Atman-Brahman is the sole reality; it is the
All; it is free from desire, it is also essentially un-
knowable, for it is You. Knowledge of this is in
itself emancipation, and looses the soul from the
delusions of rebirth. "He who is without desire,
desire having been laid to rest, is himself his own
desire — he is Brahman." So spake Yajnavalkya.

The Upanishads throughout their repetitious in-
volutions do not flinch from the principle of eman-
cipation through non-desire. Yet they seem to
flicker down from these pale heights of Yajnavalkya ;
and through concessions to the insistent calls of

1 Condensed from Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad, II, 4 and IV, 5,
mainly as rendered by Max Miiller, Sacred Books of the East, Vol.
XV, with emendations from Deussen.

ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 53

empirical knowledge, the Atman-Brahman becomes
more active, more cosmogonic if one will, and more
knowable. It fills the roles of Creator, Preserver,
and Destroyer — "the womb of nature and perhaps
her grave." "At the bidding of this imperishable
one, O Gargi (again speaks Yajnavalkya) sun and
moon are kept asunder, heaven and earth are kept
asunder; the minutes and the hours are kept
asunder, the days and nights, the months and
seasons and the years. At the bidding of this im-
perishable one, O Gargi, the streams run from the
snow mountains, some to the east and some to the
west, whithersoever each goes. At the bidding of
this imperishable one, men praise the bountiful
givers, the gods desire the sacrificer, the fathers the
offerings to the dead." 1

It is thus that to the high strain of that adjust-
ment which lies in the dreamless Unity of the Abso-
lute, the Upanishads add props and comfortings,
sops to the insistent barkings of man's actual en-
vironment. Yet they still teach unwaveringly the
emancipation lying in detachment and freedom from
desire.

Religion attaches itself by the ways of hope and
aspiration to aims and objects which may or may
not prove clear and consistent when critically
analysed. Logic and metaphysics, issuing from

*Brih-Up. Ill, 8, 9 (Deussen).

54 DELIVERANCE

other phases of human faculty, are likely to devi-
talise the objects of religious yearning. In ratioci-
nation the religious impulse is checked, its emotion
distracted, while the seamy sides of the method
and Object of Religion are disclosed. Other
emotions, arising in the progress of debate, may
confirm the combatants' positions; but they are
the emotions of conflict. The creators of religions
are those who have voiced anew men's yearnings
and given new life to their hopes, and with such
sufficiency of definiteness that others could take up
the impulse and echo its expression, — an expres-
sion, an actualisation, mark you, of their own poten-
tialities of aspiration.

The most ancient Buddhist writings are in Pali,
a language current in parts of northern India about
the time when Gotama lived, in the fifth or sixth
century before Christ. If they are tediously
dialectical, they still deprecate the discussion of
whatever goes beyond salvation's needs ; and though
the argumentative form seems to point backward
to the actual methods of Gotama, one may be sure
that he brought again to true expression those In-
dian aspirations and those notes of Indian sorrow
which had been over dialecticised in the Upani-
shads. A comfort deeper than argument drew men
to the Buddha, and evoked their cry : 'I take refuge
in the Buddha, in his Teaching, and in the Brother-
hood." There is in fact no ground for questioning

ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 55

what is vouched for by the concurrence of all the
early records : that as the adjustment which Gotama
reached was reached through meditation, so he set
it forth in the form of reasoned statements which
made their own transforming and vitalising use of
the Brahmanical argumentation of his time.

Gotama's attainment and the whole content of
the Buddha's system, which from pity he imparted
to those who were fit for wisdom, may, from our
point of view, be bounded within the conception of
the individual's adjustment with life. The cir-
cumstances of the attainment of this noble Sakya
youth to Buddhahood have been told, usually
with an accumulation of myth, millions of times.
Shall we say, the tale is the more impressive
the more nakedly it is presented in the closest
approximation to the probable facts ? There is
profound absurdity in this idea : the probable facts !
they were of the spirit in its crisis and in its prepa-
ration too. With scarcely less foolishness might
one seek for the "probable facts" of the Forty
Days in the wilderness or the night upon Geth-
semane ! Possibly the myth-making instinct of the
Buddha's followers has wisely adorned the tale, in
order that it might symbolise the ineffable value of
this achievement for mankind. Alack ! this rever-
ent mythopoesy is only too apt to be fond and
foolish : in India it has done as foolishly in Birth-
stories of the Buddha's countless previous lives, as

56 DELIVERANCE

it was to do in our apocryphal Gospels, filling out
the child-life of Jesus to accord with the imperative
silliness of the human mind. Only let us be also
sure that any attempt to discover the truth of
such experiences, through critical weighings of the
sources, is a process likely to fool the wise more
dangerously than legends fool the babes.

Gotama was born and lived in northeastern India.
His temper was impregnated with the moods, and
his mind was filled with the thoughts, which are
expressed in the Upanishads. He was a child of
the Indian discussion of the Absolute and Unabso-
lute, and the Indian aversion to the phenomena of
life. His system drew its manner, its setting, most
of the substance of its argument, — or by repulsion
its denials — from the spiritual environment of its
founder. Its point of view, its temper, its purpose
are practically those of Brahmanism. Said the
young Brahman to Death : :< Keep thou thy horses,
keep dance and song for thyself. Shall we be happy
with these things, seeing thee ?" 1 "How is there
laughter," says the Buddhist, "how is there joy, as
the world is always burning ? Why do ye not seek
a light, ye who are surrounded by darkness ? This
body is wasted, full of sickness and frail ; this heap
of corruption breaks to pieces, life indeed ends in
death." "Let no man love anything; loss of the

1 Katha-Up. i, I, 26.

ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 57

beloved is evil. Those who love nothing and hate
nothing have no fetters. From love comes grief,
from love comes fear; he who is free from love
knows neither grief nor fear." 1 Buddhism, finally,
is at one with Brahman doctrine, in teaching that
ignorance is the ground of human misery, while in
knowledge lies salvation.

But in its metaphysics and psychology, Buddhism
was revolutionary, denying the Absolute Brahman
and the Absolute Self in man. It was also revolution-
ary in abjuring caste and abandoning sacrifices
along with asceticism.

Who does not know the outline of external cir-
cumstance, fairly historical, enveloping Gotama's
attainment to the Buddhahood ? This highborn
youth of the Sakya people marries, begets a son,
and as the years leave him the graver for their
passage, he abandons his home and becomes an
ascetic "in the forest." It was not unusual for a
man thus to seek detachment and salvation; and
Gotama came in search of this adjustment.

He practised asceticism, it is said, for seven
years. Apparently gaining no help from his aus-
terities, he stopped them. At this evident relapse,
five ascetics who had been his followers left him —
alone. One night he perceived, we are told, the
universal principle of the causation and dependency

1 Dhammapada, 146, 148, 21 1, 215.

58 DELIVERANCE

of all phenomena relating to man, or constituting
states of human consciousness ; thereupon realising
the pain of everything pertaining to individual life,
he was loosed from the craving which is sorrow,
and entails rebirth. This was his adjustment.
Having attained the peace of complete enlighten-
ment, he became the Buddha, or as he later called
himself, the Tathagata — the perfected one.

Gotama's adjustment with life, the enlightenment
through which he became the Buddha, consisted of
this principle of dependency and causation, and of
the contents of the more practical working formulae
of the Eightfold Path and the Four Noble Truths.
The Eightfold Path and the Four Truths, according
to the concurrent testimony of the early records,
made the kernel of his teaching when addressing
those whose minds were open. When they had
received this instruction, he would impart more
fundamentally the difficult principle of causation
and dependency. To the intellectual mood of
which Buddha was the exponent, everything em-
braced within the cravings of individuality, in fact
all states of human consciousness, were painful;
blessedness lay in release : that was Salvation. It
was this path of happy release which he set forth
to his disciples, and upon which he himself had
entered by the way of the principle of causation
and dependency. This expressed his understand-
ing of life's painful round — the giro of conscious-

ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY, 59

ness — and the manner of release. Let us therefore
consider it, before referring to the embodiment of
the teacher's doctrine in his current preaching.

Buddha did not state his principle of causation
in the categories of western thinking, nor did he
ever expound it in a way that we can deem satis-
factory. Attempts to present it to our minds seem
to become more futile as they become more analytic
and explicit. One may as well admit that it can-
not be made quite clear, nor accommodated to our
ways of thinking, without introducing much that
the Buddha did not intend. But at all events the
scheme is striking, and impresses where it may not
convince or satisfy.

Gotama did not learn of pain in the forest, for
the realisation of it had driven him from his home.
In the forest, he gained insight into the way of its
origin and cessation. But since all life was filled
with pain, insight into its origin and cessation in-
volved enlightenment as to the origin and cessation
of all experience entering human consciousness.
So questions of origination, coming to pass, becom-
ing, of passing away, cessation, and release, pressed
on his mind ; the solution raised Gotama to Buddha-
hood. Here it is — in its Englished inexpressibility.

"In dependence upon ignorance arise the San-
khara (conformations, Gestaltungen, a term which
will fit itself into no single European word — or
many European words) ; in dependence upon them

60 DELIVERANCE

arises consciousness; in dependence upon con-
sciousness arise name and corporeal form (or mind
and body) ; from name and form spring the six
fields (i.e. the senses, which include thought as a
sixth) ; from them comes contact (between the
senses and their objects) ; from contact springs sen-
sation (or feeling) ; from sensation springs thirst
(or desire) ; from thirst springs grasping or clinging
(to individual existence) ; from grasping springs
becoming (or possibly the predisposition to becom-
ing); from that comes birth (perhaps rather re-
birth); and in dependence upon birth follow old
age and death, grief, lamentation, suffering, dejec-
tion and despair. Such is the origin of the whole
realm of pain."

This being the origin of pain, release lay in the
counter truth ; and thus the Buddha supplemented
his principle of dependent origination by that of
cessation on the removal of the cause: 'But, if
ignorance be removed through the complete de-
struction of desire, this effects a removal of the
Sankhara; through their removal, consciousness
ceases ; by the cessation of consciousness, name and
form will cease; thereupon the fields of sense fall
away; then there is no contact, sensation ceases,
thirst is destroyed and with it falls the grasping
after existence; thereupon becoming ceases and
birth (or rebirth) ; and old age and death and the
whole realm of sorrow are destroyed/5

ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 6l

Again be it said, it is futile to discuss the incidents
of this scheme of causal or conditioned taking place;
there is, as will be seen, no being in it. But we may
realise that Gotama, affected by current doctrines
of transmigration, did not think of any life as
beginning at birth and ending at death; and we
shall fail to understand this causal scheme unless
we feel it lapping over from one living to the next.
In Brahmanism that which passes over is the soul
held in the destiny of its desires and deeds. In
Buddhism this entity of soul is dissipated, and it is
the power of the act (Karma) which carries over,
and somehow impregnates a new consciousness and
imposes itself upon name and form anew. The
"ignorance'3 appearing as the first in the chain of
evil, means ignorance of the Buddha's teachings,
especially as set forth in the Eightfold Path and the
Four Noble Truths.

The early stories tell of the Buddha's hesitancy
to impart to purblind men the adjustment which
had brought him peace at last, after such years of
meditation. At last from goodness, from pity, or
from a complexity of benignant or .functional
motives escaping our analysis, and difficult for us to
reconcile with Buddha's doctrine, he decides to
preach. So he sets out to instruct those five ascet-
ics who had been his followers until repelled by
his abandonment of asceticism. Perhaps in view
of their cavillings, this famous sermon of the eight-

62 DELIVERANCE

fold path and four truths, first spoken as men say
in the deer-park Isapatana at Benares, is, in some
versions, made to open thus :

'There are two extremes which he who has
given up the world ought to avoid : a life given to
pleasures and lusts, which is degrading, sensual,
vulgar and profitless ; and a life given to mortifica-
tions, which is painful, ignoble and profitless. By
avoiding these two extremes the Tathagata has
gained knowledge of the Middle Path, which leads
to insight and wisdom, to peace and to Nirvana.
It is the way to the abatement of suffering, the Holy
Eightfold Path of Right Belief, Right Decision,
Right Speech, Right Act, Right Life, Right En-
deavour, Right Thought, and Right Meditation.

"This, ye Monks, is the noble truth of suffering:
Birth is suffering, age is suffering, sickness is suffer-
ing, death is suffering, the presence of the unloved,
the absence of the loved, is suffering, not to obtain
our desire is suffering; in fine, the fivefold clinging
to existence is suffering.

"This, ye monks, is the noble truth of the Origin
of Suffering : it is the thirst that leads from rebirth
to rebirth, with pleasure and lust finding its delight
here and there: thirst for pleasure, for becoming,
for the transitory.

"This, ye monks, is the holy truth of the Cessa-
tion of Suffering : the cessation of thirst through
the complete destruction of desire, letting it go,

ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 63

abjuring it, freeing oneself from it, giving it no
place.

'This, ye monks, is the holy truth of the Way
of the Cessation of Suffering : it is the Holy Eight-
fold Path of right faith, right resolve, right speech,
right act, right life, right effort, right thought, right
meditation."

One has here the outline of the Buddha's adjust-
ment and calming of the spirit, into reconciliation,
into peace made perfect — into blessedness. One
notices, moreover, that his entire doctrine, what he
attained for himself, and what he preached to
others, is essentially adjustment, religion one may
call it. Gotama certainly had a mind of power.
Prodigious mental effort was involved in carrying
through such an analysis of the origination, depend-
ence and extinction of the chain of individual con-
sciousness, the virtual sum total of what we know
and feel, what we conceivably have been and are
becoming. The result, partly derived, partly orig-
inal, and, as a whole, constructive, was a law uni-
versal and not to be escaped from, the law of the
effect or power of the Act, whether mental or
realised in deeds. This reaches through all con-
scious or sentient living, from the insect to the per-
fected disciple about to attain Nirvana. It was a
wonderful explanatory scheme of the origin and
course of individuality, with its cravings to realise
itself on and on; a scheme forming the dialectic

64 DELIVERANCE

basis of the religion or doctrine of the way to blessed
release from the successive stages of an existence
made up of suffering.

Suffering — that is the question. How does one
think and feel about life as he has experienced it ?
Does one like or dislike it on the whole, feel it to be
desirable or intolerable ? Before Gotama's birth
the meditative temper of India had pronounced
against life's transient round, and had cast itself
upon the endeavour to construct a refuge, a state,
a being, freed from conditions of origination and
cessation, set beyond change and suffering, and
winnowed from all elements of becoming. The
result had been the superconscious Brahman-
Atman, the absolute being, and the corresponding
announcement of Yajnavalkya, there is no con-
sciousness after death for the completed and desire-
less sage.

Gotama likewise sought, and as the Buddha
attained, release from that chain of individuality
and craving which was suffering, and which was
also a ceaseless becoming; but he perceived no
Absolute in which to share, nor any sure unalter
able Self. Consequently when the suffering, when
the becoming, is stopped, is there anything beyond
the blessedness of release ?

If the Buddha's life-adjustment included the
answer to this query, we do not know it, — he did
not impart it to his disciples. He had reached the

ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 65

way of release from suffering, a path of peace,
which may be entered on even before death. He
refused to say whether the Tathagata and other
perfected ones would or would not exist thereafter.
Nor would he solve the question of an ego or no-
ego, whether there was any being within the uni-
versal process of becoming. Far less would he enter
on a discussion as to whether the world was finite
or infinite, eternal or perishable. Such discussions
were as if a man, shot with a poisoned arrow, should
delay its removal till he had learned the name and
city of him who had drawn the bow, or whether the
arrow was feathered from the wings of a hawk or
a vulture. The religious life, leading to the blessed
release, did not depend on answering such questions.
Sufficeth to know how bodily form arises and
perishes, how sensation, perception, predispositions,
and consciousness arise, and how they perish. This
is the knowledge which brings deliverance.1 The
Buddha is many times reported to have said, "As
the great ocean has but one taste, the taste of salt,
so my doctrine has but one flavour, the flavour of
emancipation."

So he stopped with the great adjustment; and
with teaching a way of life and accordant precepts
for conduct enabling men to attain it. He evinces
no detached and disinterested pursuit of knowledge :

1 Cf. H. C. Warren, Buddhism in Translations, §13, pp. 117-127.
(Harvard Oriental Series, Fifth Issue, 1909.)
F

66 DELIVERANCE

his adjustment had involved enough of wrestling
with life's data; to have gone further would have
extended needlessly the sorrow-filled states of human
consciousness. We may say that a pursuit of
knowledge here and there would have countered
the very principles of his adjustment; but then
likely we shall be talking in terms of our own, and
not in his. Doubtless Buddha never put the matter
in this way ; and how, if in any way, he put it, we
do not know.

It was enough. He had won peace; and having
won it, he lived on and taught it to the brotherhood,
putting it probably to the more enlightened in those
same self-reliant reasonings in which he had won
it for himself. To attain to this emancipating
knowledge, and conform one's thought and conduct
to its principles, was sufficient disciplina to fill the
most strenuous life. The path to be trodden by
the disciples of the Buddha was not less arduous
than the path to be trodden by the disciples of the
Christ. And when the Tathagata had passed away,
no aid, beyond the inspiration of his example, re-
mained for those Buddhist monks who would attain
the blessedness of peace. They were cast upon
their own endeavours. So he had adjured them,
"Be ye lamps unto yourselves. Be ye a refuge
unto yourselves. Betake yourselves to no external
refuge. Hold fast to the truth as a lamp. Look
not for a refuge to anyone beside yourselves. Let a

ANNIHILATION OF INDIVIDUALITY 67

monk as he dwells in the body so regard the body
that he being strenuous, thoughtful and mindful,
may whilst in the world overcome the grief which
arises from the bodily craving; so also, as he
thinks, or reasons, or feels, let him overcome the
grief which arises from the craving due to ideas,
or to reasoning, or to feeling. . . . Behold now, I
exhort you, saying, Decay is inherent in all things.
Work out your own salvation with diligence. These
were the last words of the Perfected One." 1

1 Book of the Great Decease, Sacred Books of the East, Vol. XI.

CHAPTER IV
ZARATHUSHTRA

A STRIKINGLY non-Indian and militant ad-
•^ *• justment was achieved by a man of kindred
race, Zarathushtra, the prophet of Iran.1 He won
his spiritual freedom through creating a new faith
and consecrating himself to a chosen cause, the
faith and cause of Mazda. He had found no peace
in the worship of his people's gods. Apparently
they had become to him abominations. His peace
required a god who could satisfy his intellect and
moral consciousness; and his nature cried for a
mighty righteous One to whom his heart might
turn and whom his strength might serve; who in
return would bring efficient aid and the victory
that was alike his and his servant's.

Zarathushtra would have found no rest in the
nature-gods and wavering symbolism of the Indian
pantheon, nor in an unresponsive Absolute, nor in
such a godless gospel of relief from sorrow as the

1 Cf. A. V. W. Jackson, "Zoroaster the Prophet of Ancient Iran"
(1899), also, James Hope Moulton, "Early Zoroastrianism,"
Hibbert Lectures for 1912. The date and birthplace of Zara-
thushtra are not known. He may have lived as late as the sixth
century before Christ, or as early as the tenth. And where in
Persia or Media (Atropatene ?) he was born is also unknown.

68

ZARATHUSHTRA 69

Buddha preached. There is utter disparity between
Indian convictions and the Zarathushtrian temper.
Is it that travelling north and westward, crossing
the Hindukush, we have come to a new spiritual
atmosphere ? We have certainly left the region of
Taoism's anaemic inaction and the heaven-approved
ethics of Confucius. Nor do we find conceptions
of a still and fathomless relationship with the
divine, as of Atman and Brahman, nor any self-
reliant, godless, scheme of quenching the thirst, the
suffering, and the consciousness of man.

One feels the futility of placing Confucianism,
Brahmanism, Buddhism, along with the fighting
faiths of Zarathushtra and the Hebrew prophets,
under the same general concept of religion; like-
wise the futility of separating the intellectual from
the practical driving elements within these systems ;
and finally the dangers besetting the attempt to
draw broad lines between them and the inquiring
intellectualism of Greek philosophy. Beneath all
systems lies the universal need of human nature to
function according to its faculties, while the differ-
ences inhering in those faculties and arising through
their exercise involve the whole human complex,
and will not lie snug on separate shelves of ethics,
religion, philosophy.

How the motives vary with the tempers of the
men ! All great exponents of the human need of
adjustment, masters likewise of the rational and

70 DELIVERANCE

emotional faculties through which that need is
satisfied, seek to learn and know; but with such
different inspiration and in such different fields.
Perhaps those who are entitled to the name of
philosopher would learn for knowledge's sake; but
with equal ardour the founders of ethical or religious
systems have sought in knowledge a rational basis
for their working principles and a justification for
their ideals, — only with what a tumult of diversity
they move ! These great ones, moreover, approve
or inculcate like ways of conduct — benevolence,
truth, respect for others' rights, the virtues on
which society everywhere must stand. Yet how
the sanction or reason for the practice of these
virtues varies ! Indeed, so great is the diversity
both of motive and intellectual energy that one is
equally impressed by the sameness of the under-
lying need to function and the heterogeneous modes,
the temperamental diversity, of its manifestation.

Zarathushtra was a man hard-pressed between
the resistance of opponents and his own impulse to
fight and make others fight for the faith which moved
him. He comes close to the Hebrew prophets in
the temper of his life-adjustment. This begins in
reflection and prayer, rises to a sense of divine call,
and completes itself in consecration of his energies
to the cause of Mazda. The fiery lines of thought
along which Zarathushtra may be deemed to have
broken from the beliefs about him and to have set

ZARATHUSHTRA 71

as his star the mental vision of Ahura Mazda, are
suggested in the Gathas: 1

'With outspread hands I will pray, O Mazda,
to fulfil all the works of the good spirit, that I may
please Good Thought. ... I who would serve
thee, O Mazda, — grant me the blessings of the two
worlds, that of the body and that of the spirit, by
which Ahura places in happiness them that delight
him ; I who give myself to thee, O Righteousness,
and to Good Thought, and to Ahura Mazda, to
whom belong imperishable dominion . . . come at
my call to my help. I who through Good Thought,
and knowing the rewards of Mazda, will while I
have strength teach men to seek the good. . . .
Come with Good Thought and Righteousness, O
Mazda by thy sure words give mighty and enduring
help to Zarathushtra."

Hard upon such thought of Ahura and the
thinker's ardour to bring to pass Good Thought and
the divine Righteousness, comes the call. It is as
when Isaiah beheld Yahweh high and lifted up,
heard the "Holy, Holy, Holy!" and the words,
"Whom shall I send ?" to which not alone his lips
but his life answered, "Send me!'3 So the life of
Zarathushtra responded to the nature and com-

1The portions of the Zend-Avesta known as the Gathas
(Yasna, 28-34, 43~Sr> S3) are tne mos^ direct evidence we have
of Zarathushtra's thought. But the tran slations are still difficult,
if not uncertain.

72 DELIVERANCE

mands of Ahura Mazda. He is speaking as from
a later period in his life :

"And I knew thee as an holy one, Ahura Mazda
when Good Thought came to me, asking, Who art
thou ? To whom dost thou belong ? And I
straightway answered : Zarathushtra. A foe will
I be to the liar but a strong help to the righteous,
that I may reach heaven. I praise and worship
thee, O Mazda !

"And I knew thee as an holy one, 0 Mazda,
when Good Thought came to me, and to my ques-
tions made answer : Ask what thou wilt ; for thine
asking is as that of a mighty one. . . .

"And I knew thee as an holy one, Ahura Mazda,
when Good Thought came to me, and by thy words
revealed the sorrow to be brought through my
devotion to that which thou hast declared to be
the best. Zarathushtra chooses for himself every
Holy Spirit of thine."

One may think that out of the struggles of his
later life, Zarathushtra realised the import of his
early visions and the call to do battle for Ahura.
In their lyric way the Gathic hymns of the Avesta
give the accents of the story, suggesting a time in
the prophet's life of gathering strength and clear-
ing insight, of cumulative impulse becoming master-
ing purpose, till the man becomes the prophet. He
has then not only found his god, but his god has
found him, the one man amid a dumb multitude.

ZARATHUSHTRA 73

Ahura's spirit, Good Thought, speaks to Ahura,
the supreme Lord Wisdom: "One man only have
I found who will hear thy instruction and with
accordant mind teach men thy law and declare the
faith of Mazda."

For Zarathushtra, the false gods and all the
filth and evil of the world have set themselves
against the Holy Spirits of Ahura, even against that
Supreme Wise Lord, Creator of righteousness and
truth and all things good. The history of the
world is the history of this conflict between "the
world's two primal spirits, the holier one of which
did thus address the evil: 'Neither do our minds,
our teachings, our beliefs, our words, our deeds, or
our souls agree.' ' Zarathushtra's faith lifts itself
into a militant dualism ; but a dualism endowed with
trust in the Good, and a vision which looks across
the plain of battle to the final victory, at the world's
end: "And I knew thee as an holy one when I
beheld thee bringing to pass retribution for the
wicked, reward for the good, at the world's last
change, when thou, with thy holy spirit, Mazda,
shalt appear with the power of Right Order and with
Good Thought, through whose working men in-
crease in Truth and Righteousness."

Direct personal trust in Mazda and the good
spirits which seem his attributes or (sometimes)
emanations, with fiery devotion to their cause,
this is Zarathushtra's adjustment, his free will offer-

74 DELIVERANCE

ing wherein lies the attainment of his spiritual free-
dom : "And Zarathushtra, he makes offering of his
life. He gives to Mazda's spirits the guidance of
his acts and words." Through defeat, through
discouragement, he will look for aid and guidance
to Ahura, to whose nature and commands he will
conform his life, and compel others so far as he may.
He is thwarted, pressed by defeat, forsaken of men :
"To what land shall I turn ? Followers and kin
forsake me. How can I advance thy cause, Ahura ?
I am stripped of herds and men. I cry to thee for
help ; grant me support as friend to friend. Teach
me to strive for Good Thought and insight."

So Zarathushtra fights through his life, aided by
many converts, among whom is a king, Vistaspa.
We are not concerned with the subsequent fortunes
of the faith which in some way the Parsees still
hand on, which also seems to have affected later
Jewish thought and was the ancestor of Mithraism
and Manicheism. Zarathushtra' s own adjustment
was not peace, but freedom to fight for the faith in
which he trusted. Even through our partial knowl-
edge, we are impressed with the elevated spirituality
of his conceptions, with the power of his trust in
Mazda, with the energy of the thought which
marshalled in adverse camps the good and evil of
the world, and with the strength of his assurance
of lasting reward for the good, and perdition for
the wicked, at the world's final end.

CHAPTER V
THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL

/ I X) some extent with every people the ideals of
human conduct and human life have tended
to conform to their conceptions of the supreme
Power or the Supreme Being. This form of the
statement carries more truth than the converse
one, that men have formed their ideas of God along
the lines of their best thoughts of humanity. Either
confusedly, as in primitive thought, or upon mature
reflection, men usually have felt that the Power or
Powers, good, evil, or elemental, outside themselves
were different from men in nature and function.
Mankind has hesitated to build up its thoughts of
them wholly along conceptions of what belonged
to human life or was good in human conduct. But
prudential motives have always influenced men to
propitiate those powers, and in some way adjust
their lives to the ways or will of the divine, for the
sake of their own adjustment with life and the
powers of life. In fine, even if all conceptions of
the divine will and nature be deemed the fruit of
the human mind, nevertheless men are less apt to
model them directly on the image of man than they

75

76 DELIVERANCE

are to conform their own lives to the likeness or
the will of the Divine which they have made.

Confucius, for example, could scarcely have
modelled his idea of " Heaven " and the "way of
Heaven'3 upon man; and yet to imitate the way
of Heaven was to be a sage. Neither did Lao Tzu
or Chuang Tzu form the Tao on any obviously human
pattern, although anxious to fashion their conduct
according to its ways. In India it would likewise
seem that Brahman, the Universal Absolute, was
the primary, and the Atman or eternal Self the
secondary and conforming concept. Both repre-
sent, however, the Indian ideal of undisturbed
existence. Gotama's teachings followed the mood
of the Upanishads, while revolting from their meta-
physics and establishing a new psychology. But if
the Absolute God and Self were dissipated, there
remained a most real peace and freedom from desire,
which Buddhism gradually bulwarked with eternal,
more than human, Influences, to whose ways man's
conduct should conform. We entered another
world with Zarathushtra and his fighting God,
Ahura Mazda, whom the Prophet of Iran conceived
in accordance with his most strenuous ideals, and
whose will he strove to carry out with a masterful
devotion, paralleled only among the prophets of
Israel.

We have but uncertain knowledge of the spiritual
background of Israel's religion. There were ele-

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 77

ments in the religions of Chaldaea and Canaan
suited to form the nucleus of her fierce tribal faith ;
and in Egypt waves of fluctuating monotheism were
not unusual. But it was centuries after any early
Egyptian associations had been severed that Israel's
tribal worship broadened to the conception of
Yahweh as the sole God of all the earth ; while on
the other hand, generally speaking, Israel's religious
development advanced through strenuous disavowal
both of the pressing influences of Canaan and any
possible reminiscences of Chaldaea. This little book,
which is not intended to be learned, may be pardoned
if it turn directly to the adjustment with God
reached by Israel's prophets and the most righteous
of her kings.

What a picture do we have of the life-adjustment
of Israel's first and apparently greatest prophet,
Moses ! But unhappily the earlier lines in the
Pentateuch portrait are from tradition rather than
from life, and have been freely painted over by
later hands inspired by priestly thoughts. Each of
us for himself may scan this chequered picture
under the guidance of the connoisseurs who have
separated layer From layer. Only we may be sure
that the earlier pigments reflect in some way a
man of power, whose adjustment of his life with
the commands of Yahweh forecasts the train of
kingly and prophetic effort to bring to pass that
obedience to Yahweh's will which should draw down

78 DELIVERANCE

prosperity betimes, but lead at last through tribu-
lation to a larger understanding of the ways of God.

It is safer to pass on to David, where the record
is somewhat surer. Through a life of peril and
success, as a man of war and stratagem and as a
king, he is also winning his adjustment with the
power which guides and guards him. David was a
hero even in the Epic sense, combining traits of
Achilles and Odysseus. The Homeric heroes also
relied on their gods, but not with such growth of
reciprocating devotion as marks David's attitude
toward Yahweh. And yet he is less devotedly a
servant of Yahweh than the prophets, who serve
their God without regard to self. Yahweh is to
David as a father, — who can also punish : and
David, after the manner of sons, realises Yahweh's
goodness to him only in the evening of his life.
Then we see that a religious development has been
running through his life-adjustment. If he always
looked for aid to Yahweh, in the end, besides obedi-
ence, he offers in return humility and thankfulness,
devotion and desire to build Yahweh an house.
David's best acts, his righteous conduct, as when
he would not kill the sleeping Saul, had accorded
with his recognition of Yahweh's will ; and the en-
noblement of his character proceeds through a larger
understanding of Yahweh's love.

The records of David's life-adjustment bear wit-
ness to the fulness of his life from the beginning,

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 79

with its eager energy and loving impulses dis-
closed, for instance, in those confused, but lovely,
stories of his first meeting with Saul. That his
presence, his lyre-playing, could assuage the king's
dark moods, that Saul's son and daughter loved
him, that the people sang his praises, all bespeak a
personality abounding in capacity for deeds, for
counsel, for affection, even for that outpour of
mood in song and movement which has immemorially
belonged to the heroic nature — to David, to
Achilles, or to the men of the Norse sagas.

The readiness of his genius appears in all his acts,
as when he pays the bride-price for Michal, and
then escapes from Saul's spear as well as from his
plot to murder him in bed, and concerts with
Jonathan a plan of safety. With cunning and
bravery he keeps his hunted head through his
outlawed career until made king ; and no later king
in Israel was to equal his energy of rule, before the
weakness of old age came on him.

A simple faith in Yahweh quickened his courage.
It was shown in his young confidence that Yahweh
would deliver him from the paw of bear and lion
and from Goliath's spear. It pervaded and gradu-
ally beautified his life, and moulded the sense of
right and wrong so strong in him. He must keep
well with righteousness — or bitterly repent ! And
righteousness with him was always that which
corresponded with Yahweh's will, while every

80 DELIVERANCE

wrongful act was a sin against God, as it had been
and ever was to be in Israel : ' How can I do this
great wickedness, and sin against God ?" had been
Joseph's thought; and the repentant Psalmist's
cry will be: "Against Thee, Thee only, have I
sinned."

The incidents of David's progress in that right-
eousness which was identical with Yahweh's will
and part of David's faith mark the course of his
adjustment. He had always asked, and followed,
Yahweh's counsel; and in every crisis his sense of
Yahweh helped him to act righteously, as when he
would not slay Yahweh's anointed who sought his
life, and under other circumstances allowed himself
to be turned from his revenge on the churl Nabal
by the words of Abigail. A little after this, his
conviction that victory and recovery of spoil are
from Yahweh showed him the justice of awarding
an equal share to those who kept the camp and those
who went down into the battle.

The news reaches David of the flight of Israel
and the death of Saul and Jonathan. Does he exult
that his enemy is no more and that the crown is
his ? Rather he feels the blow fallen on Yahweh's
people, and with his men he mourns and fasts,
while he chants that dirge :

"Weep O Judah !
Grieve O Israel !
How are the mighty fallen I"

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 8 1

a dirge which dwells on the public calamity until
the singer's grief for Jonathan presses back other
thoughts :

" I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan : . . .
Thy love to me was wonderful,
Passing the love of women."

A like piety and sense of right moves him to
declare before Yahweh his innocence of Abner's
blood and to follow the bier in sackcloth. And it
was heroic piety that moved him, pent up by war,
when his mighty men had brought him water at the
risk of life, to pour it out before his God.

King of all, Israel, with Jerusalem taken and
made the City of David, he thinks to honour Yah-
weh by bringing up the Ark of God. The death of
the rash Uzzah frightens him for a time, till he is
reassured. Then with sacrifices and the shouting
of Israel, and with the king himself dancing before
Yahweh with all his might, the Ark is brought up.
For a great man thus to uncover himself before his
maid-servants was a sheer Semitic horror — so it
seemed to Michal, as she taunted him returning to
his house. But David answers: "It was before
Yahweh, who chose me above thy father and above
all his house to appoint me prince over his people
Israel — I will be more vile than this, and base in
my own sight."

Then, having rest from all his enemies, David
G

82 DELIVERANCE

plans to build Yahweh a house, as told in the
seventh chapter of Second Samuel. Yahweh, by
the mouth of Nathan, stays the plan, but bids the
prophet tell his servant David how he took him
from the sheepcote to be prince over Israel, and
had been with him always, and had made him a
name above the great; and now would promise
him to establish his house and his seed after him in
the kingdom, chastening that seed as a father, but
not rejecting it. To this, David answers with full
recognition of Yahweh's mercy and greatness, and
begs him to make good his promise, in order that
Yahweh's name may be great forever and that his
servant's house may forever be established before
him. "And now O Lord Yahweh, thou art God.
And thy words are truth, and thou hast promised
this good thing unto thy servant; now therefore
let it please thee to bless the house of thy servant
that it may continue forever before thee."

There follows the untoward episode of numbering
the people, and the king's atoning sacrifice to stay
Yahweh's mysterious wrath ; then the slow incrimi-
nating story of David's crime against Uriah, and his
realisation of it at the word of Nathan, and that he
had sinned against Yahweh. Out of this crime and
sin issues the dark and moving tale of unnatural
lust, vengeance, ambition, and treachery in David's
house — from which the sword should not depart !
David's efficient penitence and the atonement which

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 83

lay in the growth of a contrite character were to be
evinced in the old king's acceptance of the foul
calamities coming on him and on his house from
the wickedness of the children of his loins. As the
king flees before Absalom he will not have the
priests carry forth with him the Ark of God : :t Carry
back the Ark of God into the City : if I shall find
favour in the eyes of Yahweh, he will bring me
again and show me both it and his dwelling; but
if he say thus, I have no delight in thee ; behold
here am I, let him do to me as seems good to him."
When Shimei curses and casts stones, the contrition
abiding in the king's heart and the sorrow that has
long been his cause him to hold back his followers :
"Behold my son which came forth from my bowels
seeks my life : how much more may this Benja-
mite ? Let him alone and let him curse ; for Yah-
weh has bidden him. It may be that Yahweh will
look on the wrong done me and will requite me good
for the cursing of this day."

In brave and faithful acts, in love of friend, in
justice, in sin, repentance, righteousness and mercy,
and through a deepening knowledge of Yahweh's
goodness, David maintained his freedom of act and
confidence of soul. In the fulness of his years,
blessing Yahweh for having given one to sit upon
his throne, his end came as the end of

" One that ruleth over men righteously,
That ruleth in the fear of God."

84 DELIVERANCE

Hebrew prophecy may be included altogether
under our conception of adjustment, as the har-
monising of the human spirit with the powers shap-
ing human destiny. The obvious function of the
prophets was to enlighten the people, more par-
ticularly the rulers, touching the efficient nature,
the commands, and the purposes of Yahweh ; and
to admonish them to act accordingly. The pro-
phetic adjustment was religious, knowing no other
sanction than Yahweh's will. Progressing with the
enlargement of the prophetic mind, it does not rep-
resent an unchanging view of the character of
the divine, but a magnificent development as the
conception of Yahweh grows from age to age under
the further enlightenment of experience and medi-
tation, through which in divers ways God inspires
his prophets. And one will see that the prophet's
thoughts of Yahweh advance to an emphatic and,
one may say, international monotheism, through
observation of Yahweh's power fashioning the fate
of Israel and the destinies of nations, and operative
within the heart of man. In like manner, Zara-
thushtra's thought of Ahura Mazda sprang forward
from exigency to exigency, pragmatically as it were,
and not through ontological meditations on the
divine nature, such as arose in India.

So the adjustment which the prophets demanded
of Yahweh's people was moulded, and continually
remoulded, on those enlarging thoughts of Yahweh's

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 85

will and purposes with which succeeding prophets
were inspired. The untowardness of events was a
stumbling-block and then again a goad, driving the
prophets on to the attainment of conceptions con-
stantly uplifting. Never did the remnant of a
people so wrestle with God for an adjustment of
their minds with the course of their destinies and
the power controlling them, as did the larger minded
Jews, crushed beneath the shock of Syrian and Assy-
rian, of Babylonian, Persian, Greek.

The prophetic adjustment drives, or is driven, on.
With respect to thoughts of God, it wins its way from
Yahweh as the peremptory god of Israel, to Yahweh
as the sole and only god, supreme in the power of
his righteousness over all nations ; and with respect
to thoughts of man, of Israel, it wins its way through
the spent hopes of national prosperity, the con-
viction of common sin and a people's responsibility,
to the thought of each individual's guilt or inno-
cence; whereupon it seems incited to discriminate
obscurely between the lots of the righteous and
the wicked beyond the grave ; but with the ineradi-
cable tribal consciousness of the Jew, it turns more
surely to the thought of a national adjustment
thrown forward to some future time, and harbouring
within the walls of a triumphant New Jerusalem,
which is sanctified through Yahweh's presence; or
the prophetic thought bows down sublimely before
an ideal of Israel as Yahweh's servant, afflicted and

86 DELIVERANCE

redeemed in the service of his other children on the
earth.

In the careers of the prophets there is none of
Jacob's patriarchal egotism or David's royal fore-
handedness. They are Yahweh's spokesmen. As
for their personal adjustment, that may appear in the
light of their exhortations to others. Moreover,
since Israel was one people, bound together through
blood, as well as through Yahweh's covenant made
with them as a people, the personal adjustment of
the prophets was merged in this common solidarity.
Did not that include Yahweh, of whom it was
declared, " In all the affliction of his people he is
afflicted" ? Likewise his prophets were afflicted in
the affliction of his people and blessed in their
prosperity. But we may think that a prophet's
surest stay was the sense that he was Yahweh's
servant, admitted to his confidences, and to a
knowledge of his will and purposes : " Surely Yahweh
does nothing unless he reveals his secrets to his
servants the prophets."

Elijah's understanding of Yahweh's will affords
an opening illustration of the prophetic adjustment.
Ahab is king of northern Israel ; he has married the
Sidonian princess Jezebel, has led his people to
worship Baal, and sorely persecuted the prophets of
Yahweh. Elijah has to his face foretold his punish-
ment through a consuming drought upon the land;
and when the drought is in its third year, he again

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 87

confronts Ahab with the challenge to determine
whether Baal or Yahweh be God — for Elijah's
Yahweh will tolerate no other god or idol in his land.
When the king has gathered all Israel unto Mount
Carmel, Elijah demands of the people, "How long
halt ye between two opinions : if Yahweh be God,
follow him, if the Baal, then follow him." And
after the test is ended, and Yahweh's fire has con-
sumed the burnt offering and the altar, there comes
the word, "Take the prophets of the Baal, let not
one of them escape."

Yahweh will endure no other god in Israel — this
conviction is one phase of Elijah's adjustment.
The other is his realisation of Yahweh's justice, so
fiercely to be vindicated upon Ahab and Jezebel for
the crime of Naboth murdered for his vineyard :
"In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth,
shall dogs lick thy blood." But in the meanwhile,
even after his triumph on Mount Carmel, flying
from Jezebel, a very queenly woman, Elijah in the
cave on Horeb, has known the earthquake and the
tempest there; and after them, in the contrasted
quiet, he has heard Yahweh's still small voice direct-
ing him.

Elijah's mantle fell on Elisha, who seems his
master's replica, but with his story set in rather
questionable miracles. It is not clear that he
advanced the thought of God. So we pass on to
Amos, the earliest prophet whose writings, or at

88 DELIVERANCE

least utterances, survive. Since Elijah's death a
hundred years had passed. Now the prophetic
vision had need to embrace not only the small rival
peoples surrounding the kingdoms of northern Israel
and Judah, but beyond them the powerful Damas-
cus, and Assyria impending from afar. The vision
of Amos has thus widened, with the result that he
knows Yahweh as the just god of all these nations,
and not of Israel alone. Very penetrating was the
vision of Amos ; if he came from among the shep-
herds of the village of Tekoa, his knowledge of
life could scarcely have been gained within their
circle.

Seemingly Israel, the northern kingdom to which
Amos spoke, was then prospering. He saw the
idolatry practised there, and the injustice and
oppression which prevailed — prevailed at least
for the stern eye whose business was to see evil.
This eye also saw Israel as a people, and foresaw
the punishment which was to come upon that
people, and make no distinction between individuals.
His vision did not extend beyond the present life
to discern the discriminating awards of a life beyond
the grave. But if the judges of the people would
hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the
gate, perhaps the God of hosts would still be gracious
to a remnant of Joseph.1 Then would come firm na-

1 Amos v. 15. Joseph here means Israel in the sense of the
northern kingdom, exclusive of Judah. One applies the name

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 89

tional well-being, in which the fortunes of obedient
Israel would be adjusted with Yahweh's beneficent
disposition toward his people. His people indeed !
there was the pivot of the difference between
Amos and the moral blind in Israel. They looked
on Yahweh as their partisan, their god to help and
keep them; Amos also knew that they were Yah-
weh's people, led by Him and known of Him ; but
for that very reason Yahweh's justice must visit on
them all their iniquities. A sad reversal here of
the view so naturally popular ! The people looked
foward to the " day of Yahweh," as a day of
triumph ! They would find it darkness.

To give point to his denunciations, Amos set
forth Yahweh as a righteous god, impartial and of
universal power, creator of the world: "It is he
that maketh the stars ; who formeth the mountains
and createth wind, and declareth his thought to
man; maketh sunrise and darkness and marcheth
over the heights of the earth; and his name is
Yahweh the god of hosts.

"He toucheth the earth and it melts, and all who
dwell in it mourn, and it shall rise up wholly and
sink like the River of Egypt. He it is who buildeth
his chambers in the heaven and foundeth his vault
upon the earth.

Israel to all the tribes, and then again to the northern kingdom,
separated from Judah after the death of Solomon. The words
"Ephraim" and "Samaria" apply to the northern region.

90 DELIVERANCE

"Are ye not as the sons of the Cushites to me, ye
sons of Israel, — saith Yahweh. Did I not lead up
Israel from Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor,
and the Syrians from Kir ? Behold, the eyes of
Yahweh are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will
destroy it from the face of the earth, only I will not
utterly destroy the house of Jacob."

Harsh indeed the message of Amos. His younger
contemporary Hosea softens it through telling of the
clinging love of Yahweh, which will not willingly
cast off — nay which will draw Israel back to her
god, if only that may be! — "When Israel was
young, I loved him, and out of Egypt called my son
hither. So much the further have they gone astray;
to Baal they sacrifice, and burn incense to graven
images. Yet I taught Ephraim to walk, held him
by his arms." The prophet knows that the sword
must consume Ephraim's iniquity, yet he hears
Yahweh's voice crying, " Oh ! how shall I give thee
up, Ephraim ? abandon thee, Israel ? Oh, how
shall I treat thee as Adma, make thee as Zeboim ?
Mine heart is turned within me. I will not execute
the heat of mine anger, will not destroy Ephraim;
for I am God, and not man ; Holy in thy midst."

Israel was as a silly dove, running to and fro,
looking for aid now to Egypt, now to Assyria. All
foolish wickedness — from the prophetic point
of view. Yahweh will have Israel trust him alto-
gether. And his love, the prophet declares, is

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 91

ready to attach itself anew to Israel's repentance.
"Return, O Israel, unto Yahweh thy God ! For
you have stumbled with your guilt. Take with you
words of penitence, return and say to Yahweh,
'Forgive all guilt, and accept what is good. We will
offer our repentant lips instead of bullocks. Assyria
shall not save us, [Egypt's] horses we will not ride,
nor any more call the work of our hands our god/
'I will heal their falling away, gladly love them;
for mine anger is turned away. I will be as dew
unto Israel ; he shall blossom as the lily, and thrust
forth his roots as Lebanon/'

Yahweh is god universal; the other gods are
nought. Hosea says it clearly: ''' Samaria's calf!
a workman made it, and it is no god." This is
monotheism, though its scope may be extended with
riper experience. Hosea's forecasting spirit seems
to waver: by the visible evil and approaching
danger, he is drawn to prophesy destruction; yet
Yahweh's saving love endures — if only the people
will repent !

The mind of Hosea, like the mind of Amos, and
in general, the mind of the Old Testament prior
to the Exile, dwells in the conviction that obedience
to the righteous will of Yahweh will establish Israel
in safety and gladness. The righteous prosper, —
that is a basic conviction. The prophetic adjust-
ment still abides in this assurance; it has not yet
taken refuge in the hope of a future Israel redeemed

92 DELIVERANCE

and reestablished in obedient communion with
Yahweh, forever in their midst. Still less has there
come the thought of a recompense for the down-
trodden righteous in the resurrection of the dead.
Life for these earlier prophets is altogether in the
body, though its best part be a communing
with Yahweh. He upholds his people in their
homes, in their comings and goings, their flock-
raisings and godly businesses throughout their land,
and will uphold them so long as they obey, or for
his love's sake, perhaps a little longer. But Amos
and Hosea see disobedience throughout the northern
kingdom and foresee the ruin coming as its conse-
quence from Assyria. That also will be Yahweji's
act.

One doubts the validity of the one horn or the
other of the prophetic thesis. Israel herself was to
learn that the righteous may not prosper, and that
the ungodly often prosper obviously. In these re-
spects the prophetic adjustment does not satisfy;
although the prophets in their assurance of Yahweh,
their god, who rules all nations in the power of his
righteousness, have established what will prove
valid for ages.

Younger than Hosea and Amos, the Judean Isaiah
lived to see the northern kingdom fall, and a like
ruin threaten his own Jerusalem. Gifted of Yahweh
beyond other men, and taught by what he saw and
foresaw, it was his lot to test the prophetic adjust-

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 93

ment already reached, invest it with new glories of
imagery and new power of expression, qualify and
amplify it through further consideration of its
conclusions in the light of his knowledge of Yahweh
and experience of disasters coming upon men ;
and then deepen and enlarge it through the power
of his genius. Isaiah's name is hallowed, not only
through the utterances which were his, but also
by reason of those ascribed to him, to which have
clung the hopes of men. But it is difficult, in the
changing lights of modern criticism, to decide which
portions of the first thirty-nine chapters of the great
prophetic book should be ascribed to this Judaean,
whose eyes were stricken with the sight of present
evil, and calamities approaching, in the second half
of the eighth century before Christ.

Isaiah's convictions as to the character and
commands of Yahweh may be said to combine those
of Amos and Hosea. Only in him monotheism is
deepened and illuminated. He saw more clearly
than his elders that the nations were but Yahweh's
instruments, rods of his anger, the axes with which
God hews ; and with scornful clarity he showed
the folly of presenting in expiation before Yah-
weh anything but faith and righteousness. Reli-
ance on heathen aid — upon Egypt — is madness.
Faith in Yahweh, joined with right conduct and
freedom from idolatries of thought and act, are the
horsemen and the chariots of Judah. Righteousness

94 DELIVERANCE

and national well-being go together, are bone of
each other's bone, flesh of each other's flesh ; they
are included and assured in obedience and faith.

How could Isaiah doubt of this, knowing Yahweh
to be righteous and all-powerful and Israel's god, who
held Israel as sons reared by him, — how could he
doubt but that Judah would prosper if obedient,
established in the land which Yahweh had given
to his people ? But Judah's actual state drives this
assurance from his mind, which perforce is filled
with realisation of the suicidal disobedience and
folly of rulers and people, their empty rites and
no-gods, their sought-for pleasant answers and wilful
falsities of hope and policy, — sin added to sin,
bringing destruction. Hence most of the prophet's
utterances are warnings and denunciations and
predictions of ruin, now falling on Israel, soon to
fall on Judah, finally to fall upon that rod of Yah-
weh's wrath, Assyria.

Is Isaiah moved, a little in the manner of those
who afterwards wrote marvels in his name, to
push forward his hopes, beyond the horizon of the
present, to some assurance of future restoration or
individual blessedness ? He possessed that most
unshaken of Old Testament convictions, that of
Yahweh's faith-keeping with his people, his mercy
and benevolence, and his saving purpose. Yahweh
had no more delight in Israel's disasters than in the
sins of which they were the result : he did not

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 95

willingly afflict or grieve his people. But in those
closing decades of the eighth century, a man with
Isaiah's mind could not but foresee the probable
realisation of his conditional prediction, the down-
fall of Judah as well as of that northern kingdom,
which fell before he had ceased from prophesying.
If he expected Judah's fall, must he not modify his
hopes, his convictions regarding Israel, in fine his
adjustment, in order to hold fast to his assurance of
Yahweh's love and mercy ? Did it come to him to
project this assurance into the future, and behold in
certain hope a restoration, a redemption of a people
now staggering to ruin ? Was it given only to some
later seer, or did Isaiah foresee the time when
the people who walked in darkness should behold
a great light, when the yoke of Israel should be
broken, and a child should have been born upon
whose shoulder dominion shall rest ? who shall
be the Prince of Peace upon the throne of David,
and to whose kingdom there shall be no end ? A
time when a king shall reign righteously, and princes
rule justly, like water courses in a parched land and
the shadow of a high rock ! When the folly of the
fool and the knavery of the knave shall be laid bare ;
but the eyes of them that see shall not be dim and
the ears of them that hear shall hearken, and the
stammerer's tongue speak plain ? 1

1 Isaiah ix. 1-7 ; xxxii. 1-8.

96 DELIVERANCE

If this vision was not Isaiah's, his refuge still was
Yahweh's righteousness to be shown in the chasten-
ing, perhaps in the necessary destruction of his
people; for Isaiah did not advance to a discrimina-
tion between the righteous Israelites who should be
saved and the wicked who should perish. That
progress in the prophetic adjustment was left to
Jeremiah and Ezekiel, — and perhaps to the Book
of Deuteronomy.

The book last named may have been written not
very long before the year of Jeremiah's call (626 B.C.)
and was "found" by Hilkiah the high priest in the
temple in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign
(621 B.C.). Its burden was the Covenant between
Yahweh and his people; and its exhortation was to
keep from graven images, from heathenism, and
wickedness, to fear Yahweh, and walk in all his
ways, and keep his statutes, and love and serve him
alone with entire heart and soul and strength;
so would Yahweh fulfil the Covenant which he
swore unto their Father Abraham, and unto them
at Horeb when he commanded them to keep his
statutes; then he would make his people blessed
and numerous as the stars, in the land which he
had promised unto Abraham. But their covenant to
obey did not lie in outer acts alone; they should
circumcise the foreskin of their heart. And al-
though the time-honoured thought of visiting the
sins of the fathers upon the children is retained as

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 97

of course in the Deuteronomic decalogue, neverthe-
less in that book Yahweh's statutes are brought
home to every Israelite, making him individually
responsible for his acts: 'The fathers shall not be
put to death for the children, neither shall the chil-
dren be put to death for the fathers, every man shall
be put to death for his own sin." 1 Thus the book
seems to set before each man, as well as before the
nation, life and death, the blessing and the curse,
that the people and every one of them may choose
life, to love Yahweh and cleave to him, as their
life and length of days, so that they may dwell in
the land promised to their fathers.

Composed during the flickerings out of kingship
in Judah, Deuteronomy still earnestly treats the
people as a nation, still exhorts them to the per-
fected fulfilment of Yahweh's statutes, and to the
final obedience of love. And the king, Josiah, under-
took a reform and purification of his kingdom accord-
ing to the mandates of this new-found book.2 But
the end could not be averted. Josiah was but a
child when he began to reign, and to reward his
youthful reforming righteousness, Yahweh held
back the ruin of his kingdom for the little while
until he should sleep with his fathers. The pro-
phetic work of Jeremiah began in the thirteenth year
of Josiah; it continued forty years, through the

1 Deut. xxiv. 16. See Deut. v. 9, and Ex. xx. 5 and xxxiv. 7.
1 2 Kings xxii. and xxiii.
H

98 DELIVERANCE

foolish reigns of the last kinglets. He saw the first
siege of Jerusalem and the carrying into exile of its
better part (597 B.C.) ; and eleven years later the final
destruction of the city by the Chaldaeans. Judging
from the general tone of Jeremiah's admonitions, the
reforms of Josiah had but scratched the surface of
Judah's guilt; perhaps they had helped to blow up
the false hope that an observance of ritual would
ward off the Babylonian attack.

Jeremiah was not born in the city, but in a village
a few miles to the north. One may think of him as
a young, well-nurtured countryman abruptly struck
with the luxury and corruption of the capital ; and
yet he was not more impressed by it than the high-
born and city-bred Isaiah had been before him.
This country youth, in spite of his bashful sense of
his own ineptitude, knows that he is chosen, even
before he came forth from the womb, to be a " brazen
wall against the kings of Judah, the princes and the
common people."

It is largely the old, old story of denunciation
of idolatry, luxury, wickedness — of so much that
made the common round of life in town and country.
Such admonitions reached their final Cassandra stri-
dency in the utterances of this man who realised
the shifty folly of Judean politics and foresaw their
consequences. And yet how could a little crumbling
state do otherwise than turn from one to another of
its dominant neighbours, according to the apparent

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 99

shifting of power ? The affairs of western Asia and
Egypt were in a flux as the seventh century ended
and the sixth began — when Scythians had made
breaches in the Assyrian empire, and the Medes
had entered therein; when Babylon had risen to
the south, strong and independent, and a dynastic
revolution had made Egypt for the time aggressive,
yet had not given her the strength to stand against
the arms of Babylon.

The emotional and one might say overwrought
utterances of this prophet have sustained the tradi-
tion of a man of contention and lament, who was
wont to curse the day of his birth, because of the
burden of his life and his prophetic office; who
frequently besought Yahweh to avenge him of his
enemies, — deliver over their children to famine,
their young men to the sword, their wives to widow-
hood. He was beset with danger and contumely,
mobbed in his own village, in the capital cast into a
putrid cistern, again imprisoned, threatened with
death ; all of which quite naturally was put upon one
who would prophesy nothing but evil, and appeared
in Jerusalem's streets with a yoke upon his neck to
signify the yoke which Nebuchadnezzar would set
on the neck of Judah. In the end when the last
weak king had rebelled against the overlord to whom
he had pledged his fealty, Jeremiah advised men to
escape from the city and seek safety in the Chaldaean
camp. He himself attempted to go out, but was

100 DELIVERANCE

arrested at the gate. Surely some fear of Yahweh
must have lain on king and princes, that they did
not kill such a grievously clear-seeing man !

How could Jeremiah cherish any present hope of
the people of Judah ? Weeping, he had implored
Yahweh, and Yahweh had answered that though
Moses and Samuel should plead for them, yet
would he cast them forth (Jer. xv. i). So, fore-
seeing their destruction as a nation, and the de-
struction of that symbol of nationality, the Temple,
Jeremiah reached the conception of a further adjust-
ment. His faith discriminates; let the wicked
perish and the righteous live. If Yahweh indeed
was known as a god to :( recompense the iniquity
of the fathers into the bosoms of the children,"
still would not the time come when it should no
more be said that the fathers have eaten sour grapes
and the children's teeth are set on edge ? when,
rather, every man should die for his own iniquity ?
But then would not Yahweh Js covenant be broken ?
— at least, how could its counter-conditions be ful-
filled by a nation which was to be destroyed before
the prophet's eyes ? Jeremiah's conception, if it still
remained national, became spiritual ; and he found
his grand adjustment in a new covenant between
Yahweh and the House of Israel, not like the
covenant made with their fathers when he brought
them out of the land of Egypt — which they broke :

"But this is the covenant that I will make with

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL ioi

the House of Israel, after those days, says Yahweh.
I will put my law in their breast, and write it in
their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall
be my people. And they shall teach no more
every man his neighbour and every man his brother,
saying, Know Yahweh, for they shall all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest of them, says
Yahweh ; for I will forgive their iniquity and I will
remember their sin no more."

This new Covenant is with the House of Israel.
But it is written on the heart of every Israelite,
and not on tablets of stone set in a public place.
Can we say that the House of Israel consists of those
in whose hearts this righteousness is written, rather
than of those who are born Israelites ? Or shall it
be that all who are of that stock in those days will
be righteous ? Jeremiah looked forward certainly
to Israel's restoration, and symbolised his assurance
by purchasing his uncle's field, and putting the deed
away to remain for years to come, when, as Yahweh
said, Houses and fields and vineyards should be
possessed again in the land. His book has proph-
ecies of future restoration. Some of them may
not have been uttered by this man who saw Judah's
ruin and the carrying away of her sons. But as he
heard the voice in Ramah of Rachel weeping for
her children and refusing to be comforted, so he
also heard Yahweh bidding him cry: Refrain thy
voice from weeping and thine eyes from tears;

102 DELIVERANCE

for they shall come again from the land of the
enemy, and thy children shall return — Ephraim
as well as Judah.

There is a noble consideration of the ways of God
in the third poem of that book of Dirges so long
ascribed to Jeremiah, and composed after the city's
fall. Yahweh's hand has been heavy on the speaker
and on Judah, but his soul chants, — "it is of
Yahweh's mercies that we are not utterly consumed,
because his compassions fail not. They are new
every morning : great is thy faithfulness. Yahweh is
my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in
him. ... It is good that a man should both hope
and quietly wait on the salvation of Yahweh. . . .
For Yahweh will not cast off forever ... for he
doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of
men. . . . Let us search and try our ways and
turn again to Yahweh. . . . Mine eye runneth
down with rivers of water for the destruction of the
daughter of my people. ... I called upon thy name,
O Yahweh, out of the low dungeon. Thou heardest
my voice. ... O Yahweh, thou hast pleaded the
causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life."

Was any people ever so spiritually quickened by
tribulation as the Jews ? They reached their highest
thoughts of God, of their god, Yahweh, only when he
had cast them down in exile. It was then that they
conceived more clearly the duties of their fealty and
the privileges of their hope in him. They realised

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 103

not only his sole sovereignty over all the peoples of
the earth, but also his purpose, in that they were to
be his people not for themselves alone, but for the
glory of his name and as a light to the nations.
Ezekiel, the priest prophet, and the great unnamed
ones whose utterances make part of the Book of
Isaiah, present these latter stages of the prophetic
adjustment, the last before prophecy became what
is called apocalyptic.

The idea of individual responsibility is set forth in
Ezekiel's eighteenth chapter: " Behold all souls are
mine ; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of
the son is mine : the soul that sinneth, it shall die. . . .
The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father,
neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son :
the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon
him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon
him. But if the wicked will turn from all his sins
that he has committed, and keep all my statutes,
and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely
live, he shall not die. . . . Have I any pleasure in the
death of the wicked ? . . . But when a righteous
man turneth away from his righteousness, and com-
mitteth iniquity, he shall die." Ezekiel's own
righteousness was to be that of a watchman to the
House of Israel, to warn the wicked man from his
way — and if he turn not from his wickedness, he
shall die : but thou hast saved thyself.1

1Cf. Ez. iii. 16-21; xiv. 9-20; xxxiii. 1-9.

104 DELIVERANCE

Thus explicitly, with more emphasis than clarity,
the principle of individual responsibility thrusts
itself to the front of Ezekiel's adjustment. Yet
his interest still centres in Israel as a people; as is
evident in the promises which follow of future res-
toration when Yahweh shall make a covenant of
peace with his ill-shepherded flock, and set over them
my servant David. The tenor of this restoration,
with its forgiveness and its spiritual regeneration,
are set forth: "Son of man, when the house of
Israel dwelt in their own land, they defiled it by
their ways and doings . . . wherefore I poured out
my fury upon them . . . and I scattered them
among the nations. And when they came among
the nations, they profaned my holy name. . . .
Therefore say unto the house of Israel, I do not this
for your sake, 0 house of Israel, but for my holy
name, which ye have profaned among the nations
whither ye have gone. And I will sanctify my great
name . . . which ye have profaned, and the nations
shall know that I am Yahweh. . . . For I will
take you from the nations, and gather you out
of all countries, and will bring you into your
own land. And I will sprinkle clean water upon
you, and ye shall be clean. ... A new heart
also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within
you. . . . And I will put my spirit within you, and
cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep
my judgements, and do them. And ye shall dwell

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 105

in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye
shall be my people, and I will be your God. . . .
Then shall ye remember your evil ways . . . and
ye shall loath yourselves in your own sight for your
iniquities and abominations" (Ez. xxxvi.).

The vision of the valley of dry bones reclothed
with flesh symbolises the character of the restoration
— the dry bones both of (northern) Israel and Judah
shall be made one nation in the land, under one king.
Then Yahweh's victory shall follow over the nations
who assault his people. After this comes the build-
ing of that temple, so elaborately described, in which
Yahweh shall forever dwell, in his people's midst.

In Ezekiel's closed and priestly mind, this restora-
tion is of the people of Israel; and the Temple is
for their god, exclusively for him and them. The
nations have no share. Yahweh's service is purified
from every gentile taint, even from lay participation,
and is confided to the holy priesthood; his ritual
becomes as strict as the statutory righteousness which
he demands of his people. Ezekiel's adjustment
was formal and for Israel alone ; and his ideals were
to dominate the legalistic phases of later Judaism.
But others spoke more universal hopes, and other
minds than that of this priest-prophet applied
themselves to the mystery of the connexion between
righteousness or sin and the prosperity or misery of
the righteous or sinning individual or people. From
the period of the exile, the Old Testament writings

106 DELIVERANCE

may be regarded as a literature of adjustment of
the facts and hopes of Israel, of the Israelites, of
universal man, with the power and the steadfastly
assumed righteousness of God.

It is difficult not to regard the Exile as providen-
tial. Who has not realised how in some way he, or
she, has learned through tribulation ? From suffer-
ing, wisdom, said ^Eschylus. Israel furnishes na-
tional illustration of the theme. For centuries
they had felt themselves a people, delivered and
preserved through the power of their righteous god,
whose special care they were; he had established
them for ever in the land which he had covenanted
to them. Now this people, and, more especially,
that better part which most keenly felt itself Israel,
had been taken from their heritage to labour as a
captive community in the midst of their overweening
enemies. It was for them to brood upon their
lot as a people collectively chastened, punished,
cast out by their god, — for a time ? forever ?
with what intent ? — or they might muse upon God's
treatment of the individual, the good or wicked man.
How was Israel to be repaired, restored again, in some
conformity with these exiles' unshakable conviction of
Yahweh's power and righteousness and peculiar care
of his people ? And, considering like matters less
nationally, more particularly, how reconcile God's
justice with the divers lots of men ? and having
regard to this more individual adjustment, how

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 107

teach man to conduct his life ? Struggling for the
solution of these problems, certain Israelites, either
of the Exile or still dwelling in an orphaned land,
reached the sublimest expression of their faith in
Yahweh's righteousness and love. Their solutions
did not rest on human wisdom and energy. Yahweh
did all, inspired the thoughts of men, fulfilled or
frustrated them, and brought to pass the destinies of
nations.

With the fall of Jerusalem and the extinction of
every ray of present national hope, those whose
minds clung to the destinies of Israel were forced
to look far into the future and draw their peace from
thoughts of redemption and restoration. It was
partly thus with Jeremiah and wholly thus with
Ezekiel. And when Jerusalem's fall brought further
bands of exiles to Babylon, the nation of Israel
seemed broken into small communities settled in
the midst of alien multitudes. The restoration of
such bands to national integrity and territorial
power in far-off Judea gradually lost material likeli-
hood. Yahweh could accomplish even this; but
his purposes were clothed with the majesty of
righteousness. Israel's restoration must be such
as to exemplify the character, sublime and spiritual,
of the god of all the earth. Evidently Yahweh's
purpose, as his power, was of world-wide scope.
It would not simply restore Israel to what she was
before : her restoration must be an incident, a means

108 DELIVERANCE

for the accomplishment of Yahweh's universal
plan of righteousness. In consonance with these
necessities of thought, the idealising prophets of
the Exile raised and sanctified their conceptions
of Israel's restoration and final destinies.

It were futile to set forth the adjustments of
Israel's destinies with Yahweh's character and
purposes as conceived in the exilic portions of the
Book of Isaiah, save in those words and images
which have compelled men's imaginations and
spoken their most sacred hopes for the last two
thousand years. The imagery clothing the thought
and feeling of these writings has lent itself to the
plastic conceptions of successive and diverse genera-
tions. Representing the highest truth of poetic
expression, it does not gain in clarity by analytic
restatement. Yet we may recall the background
of these utterances. In certain chapters of the
first part of Isaiah (whether he be their author, or
another) Yahweh works his purpose with a re-
deemed and sanctified Israel, through a king of
David's line whose righteousness is Yahweh's
righteousness, and whose power is Yahweh's power.1
Unto him shall the nations seek. This idea was
natural before David's house had fallen utterly,
and it continued long afterwards to move men in
whom the memory of that house was strong. Yet
as one decade of servitude succeeded another, and
1 Is. ix., xi., xxxii. Cf. the much disputed Zech. ix.

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 109

the hope of a royal embodiment of Yahweh's rule
waned with the exiles, it was replaced by a counter-
thought of profounder religious content. Righteous
kings, prophets, and priests had held themselves
and the people also to be Yahweh's servants. As
their religion rose to the thought of one righteous
God of all the earth, the conception of their service
rose in correspondence. Serving Yahweh meant
serving his design of world-wide redemption. In
Babylon, Jews were not kings, but servants : the
visible servitude of their condition might suggest
new aspects of their destiny and mission. If
Israel was to be redeemed and restored, might it
not be in the role of Yahweh's servant, at a time
when Yahweh's name should be honoured throughout
the earth ?

In many ways thoughts of peace and blessedness,
springing from free responsive service, would touch
devoted minds, whose conviction of Yahweh's
righteousness had never faltered. A service of
universal mediation was disclosed ; and thoughts
came of atonement through suffering, atonement
for Israel and for the sinful nations ; then an assur-
ance of forgiveness, of redemption and restoration
within the scope of Yahweh's purposes, and of final
peace and comforting through Yahweh's presence
in a redeemed Israel. Service and atonement would
be sanctified in blessedness, and rewarded with
pre-eminence among the nations.

HO DELIVERANCE

A very marvellous adjustment, or series of adjust-
ments, is unfolded by the prophet, or prophets, of
the last twenty-seven chapters of the Book of Isaiah.
It is an adjustment with God, and is brought to pass
through Yahweh's forgiveness, his redeeming love,
and the power of his spirit moving the destinies of
men, and acting within their hearts. Israel (not
as the prophet knows her to be, but as he dreamed
of her) acts and suffers in obedience and responsive
love. It is Yahweh who redeems her surely, and
compels the nations to his ends. Yahweh omnipo-
tent in the world, the sole power that accomplishes ;
also resistless in the heart, wakening its ear morning
by morning. He bruises his servant, makes him
one to bear men's sicknesses, and the sin of many,
and lay down his soul an offering for guilt. In his
service the Servant is very close to Yahweh, who had
been afflicted in all the afflictions of his people,
had cried out like a woman in travail, and had
drawn into his passionate redemptive purpose this
Servant, in order to make many righteous, and
thereby make redemption possible for Israel and
the nations. The willingness to suffer ! the Servant
has this in common with his God. As he has been
bruised and his visage marred, so from the travail
of his soul shall he also be satisfied, when there shall
be proclaimed "an acceptable year of Yahweh, and
a day of vengeance of our God; to comfort the
mournful ones of Zion, to give them oil of joy for

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL in

the raiment of mourning. . . . And they shall
build up the ruins of old, and renew the wasted cities.
. . . And strangers shall stand and feed your flocks,
shall be your ploughmen and vine-dressers ; but ye,
priests of Yahweh shall ye be called ; men shall
name you the messengers of our God ; ye shall eat
the riches of the nations and make your boast of
their glory."

Tumultuous words these, and many more : ven-
geance on the oppressor, restoration, triumph, and
priestly mediation to the nations, of whose riches
the redeemed shall eat. Tumultuous thoughts!
The vision of Yahweh overcomes at last: "Hark
thy watchmen ! They lift up their voice : they cry
together, for they see eye to eye the return of Yahweh
to Zion." Threats and promises mingle to the end
of the prophecy, and world-wide mediation follows
upon Israel's victory, through her god, over her
enemies. But the wicked ones of Israel shall also be
cut off, and not impede the salvation of the faithful.
"I will create a new heaven and a new earth . . .
and I will exult in Jerusalem and rejoice in my
people." Rites and sacrifices shall be nothing.
'Thus saith Yahweh: Heaven is my throne, and
the earth is my footstool; what manner of house
would ye build me ? and where is the place of my
habitation ? All these my hand has made, and all
these are mine. But I have regard for him that is
of a poor and contrite spirit, and trembles at my

112 DELIVERANCE

word." Tumultuous words ! But the infinity and
spirituality of God pierces through them, and the
comfort of the Servant's presence with his god.

It is still the redemption of the nation that is
borne in mind, though its chaff will be sifted from its
wheat. The prophet who is speaking is very near
to Yahweh, folded in the assurance of his presence.
Likewise the Servant, whether that Servant be an
individual or an ideal Israel. This intimate assur-
ance is the stronghold of his peace and freedom. His
also is that holding close to God, that passionate
adjustment which fills the Psalter and makes it the
supplement and completion of the exhortations and
the warnings of the prophets, — an adjustment held
in religious feeling, and resting on the assurance of
God and the sense that man's vital relationship with
God is sufficient for him. Since He moves and
surely governs all, and holds man in His hand,
even to His heart, making man to be part of the
divine purpose and event, then come what may,
welfare or misery, life or death, nothing can divide
man from the rock of his salvation, the living God.

The Psalms set forth God's greatness, righteous-
ness, spirituality, his compassion and loving-kind-
ness. But their veritable theme is the consciousness
of man before his God. The emotions of the Psalmist
may be occasioned by the incidents of human lots ;
but they spring from man's realisation of the over-
whelming relationship of God to man. The Psalms

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 113

express the Israelite's sense of self before Yahweh, —
a sense of shortcoming, but sometimes of integrity ;
a sense of littleness before Yahweh's grandeur, of
impotence beneath Yahweh's power, of awe before
Yahweh's works : and then a sense of the desolation
which is severance from God. There presses to
utterance the fear of Yahweh, love of Yahweh, zeal
and jealousy for him, and yearning for his presence :
with these come repentance and turning from sin, a
longing to be pure in Yahweh's sight, and to be
forgiven; a longing for God's love, even for His
sympathy. Thus the nature of man in its whole
compass, sets as the tide toward God, to be met by
the flooding sense of God's loving-kindness and the
majesty of his ways. Any feeling of the untoward
lot of the Psalmist is blotted out.

How shall Yahweh not be enough for man ?

"O Yahweh, thou hast searched me and known me;
Thou knowest my downsitting and my uprising,
Thou understandest my thought afar off.

• ••**••*••

" Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
It is too high, I cannot attain unto it.
Whither shall I go from thy spirit ?
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence ?
If I climb up into heaven, thou art there,
If I take the wings of the morning,
If I dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there shall thy hand lead me,
And thy right hand shall hold me.

114 DELIVERANCE

" And how precious unto me are thy thoughts, O God !
How great is the sum of them !
If I would tell them they are more in number than the

sands ;
When I awake, I am still with thee."

Truly can the Psalmist exclaim : Thy loving-
kindness is better than life; and can realise how
God's love covers all : Thou makest the outgoings of
the morning to sing for joy. And as for life's
hard phases :

" Fret not thyself because of evil-doers !
Hold thee still for Yahweh, and hope in him."

Yahweh's sufficiency, — to abide in that is the life
of the righteous : and what part have the wicked in
the felt presence of the living God ?

Like as a hart which panteth after the water-brooks,
So panteth my soul after thee, O God."

The Psalter has also its depths of woe : My God,
my God ! why has thou forsaken me ? The melan-
cholia, the depression when man feels forsaken of God,
this is the Psalmist's grief, which crushes other woes.
Beneath it, his thoughts seem to break in sorrow,
and suggest a bitter lack of the assurance of a life
beyond the grave. It would seem so in the eighty-
eighth psalm.

"O Yahweh, God of my salvation,
I have cried day and night before thee.
Let my prayer come before thee,

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 115

Incline thine ear to my cry.

For my soul is full of troubles,

And my life draweth near unto the grave.

I am counted with them that go down into the pit,

• •••••••••

"Whom thou rememberest no more.

• ••*••••••

Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead ?
Shall the dead arise and praise thee ?
Shall thy loving-kindness be told in the grave ?

• ••••••••*

" And thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness ?

• •••••••••

"Why, O Yahweh, casteth thou off my soul ?"

Yet even without this further hope, the Psalmist,
save in black moments, conquers through his faith,
which is a realisation of Yahweh — and of man.
That is the Psalmist's adjustment. But a lack of
this assurance keeps the Book of Job from presenting
an adjustment for souls torn by the question, why
does the righteous man suffer ? The Book remains,
in the eye of reason, a majestic statement of the
problem. Yet in Job, as in the Psalms, if Yahweh's
majesty does not satisfy the sufferer's longings, it
overwhelms his mind and closes his mouth.

Stung by the ruthless one-sided arguments of the
friends, Job flings himself upon his thought of God,
his determination to be justified by Him, — if not
now, hereafter. From beneath the surges of his
afflictions, the thought of God in His infinite works

Il6 DELIVERANCE

lifts the sufferer above his doubts of God's righteous-
ness :

" Lo, these are but the outskirts of his ways,
And how small a whisper do we hear of him !
But the thunder of his power, who can understand ? '

Job is confident that, though the righteous may
suffer, it is not well with the wicked, whose cry shall
surely be unheard of Him who decrees that for man
the fear of Yahweh is wisdom, and to depart from
evil is understanding. That furthest wisdom,
which is Yahweh's plan and understanding, is His
alone. The sufferer is mastered by his yearning for
restored communion : he is ready for that vision of
power which is Yahweh's answer from the whirl-
wind. Man, dost thou know, dost thou possess,
anything wherewith to plumb the .ways of God ?
"Now that mine eyes have seen thee," is Job's
answer, ''I abhor myself and repent in dust and
ashes."

Such is Job's adjustment — though the Hebrew
sense of fitness insisted that the book should end
with Yahweh's giving Job "twice as much as he had
before."1'

Unavoidably the prophetic adjustment or situa-
tion, the adjustment in the Psalms, and the crushing
answer to Job's problem, all moved together toward

1 In its practical gnomic way the teaching of the Book of
Proverbs parallels the argumentation of the Book of Job.

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 117

the completion which one and all implicitly de-
manded, that is to say toward the supplementing of
earthly life with a life beyond the grave. This
aspiration dawns through Job's agonies, and here
and there touches the surface in the Psalter. In the
nineteenth verse of the twenty-sixth chapter of
Isaiah, written in the fourth or fifth century before
Christ, the resurrection of the dead is plainly stated,
and more elaborately in the still later book of Daniel :
"And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great
prince which standeth for the children of thy people ;
and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never
was since there was a nation even to that same time ;
and at that time thy people shall be delivered,
every one that shall be found written in the book,
and many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth
shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to
shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be
wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament;
and they that turn many to righteousness as the
stars for ever and ever."

Throughout the prophets it was the nation that
should be restored, rise again from its ashes, a
thought which does not involve the recall to life of
those myriad Israelites who had long slept with their
fathers. The distinctive promise of the Old Testa-
ment is that Israel shall endure for ever, rather than
that its dead shall rise, or individual lives continue
immortally.

Il8 DELIVERANCE

But Israel's faith in her restoration by the hand
of Yahweh had to adapt itself to the postpone-
ment of its realisation, because of the fact of Israel
so glaringly unrestored. As that consummation
appeared more and more remote, its features
ceased to resemble the realities of the past or present.
Prophecy became a revelation of the distant and
the different, of that which is supermundane if not
spiritual : it changed to what is called apocalyptic.
No longer drawing its substance from experience,
it lost the faculty of presenting reality.

The vision of Ezekiel enters upon these marvels
of revelation; and while the first part of Daniel
seems pious fiction, the latter part is sheer apocalyp-
tic. Through the last two pre-Christian centuries
and the first century of our era, apocalyptic writings
form the most curious, if not most interesting,
part of Jewish literature. The writers screen them-
selves under the holy names of the past : Enoch,
The Twelve Patriarchs, Psalms of Solomon, Baruch,
Ezra, — even Sibylline Oracles appear. Their com-
positions do not lack in power and impressiveness ;
but such revelations of a grandiloquently restored
Israel, when regarded as an adjustment of the human
spirit with any probabilities of human lot, are with-
out that reality which is drawn from the arguments
of experience.

One element of reality, however, or at least of
universal human hope, pressed gradually to expres-

THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL 119

sion in this literature of fantastic and fanatical
adjustment. It was the conviction that at least
the righteous dead should rise again, a conviction
frequently supplemented by the further hope that
the wicked should be punished. As the decades
passed, the conception of the resurrection life of
the righteous tended rather waveringly to rise from
earth to heaven, and to abandon the thought of an
Israel glorified and restored upon a paradisic earth,
for that of a more spiritual kingdom and an eternal
life in heaven. Until that resurrection, which shall
coincide with a final day of God, a true Last Judge-
ment, the spirits of the righteous are at rest guarded
by Angels.1 In portions of this literature the figure
of a Messiah advances to prominence, becomes the
protagonist of the consummation, the Judge of the
World, a more than human being, — called some-
times the Christ, The Righteous One, "The Son
of Man." 2 Again that figure passes out of view.

Were these conceptions of the resurrection of
Israelitish origin or derived from contact with the
Persian religion ? They were required by the
previous development of Jewish thought, and thus
seem to represent organic growth. In this respect

1 This is the teaching of the Ethiopia book of Enoch, xci-civ.
See Charles, " Eschatology, Hebrew, Jewish and Christian/'
Second edition.

2 In the "Similitudes," chapters xxvii-lxx of the Ethiopia
Enoch (94-64 H.C.) Charles, o.c.

120 DELIVERANCE

they appear as Israel's own, although suggestions
may have come from without. On the other hand,
the idea of souls entering immediately after death
into an immortality of blessedness or perhaps of
punishment, as held by Alexandrian Jews, repre-
sented draughts of Hellenism. With these Alexan-
drians, for instance in the Book of Wisdom or
the writings of Philo, there is no resurrection of the
body, but the soul rises to immortality upon the
body's death.

It is not hard to find a sort of spiritual parting
of the ways throughout the prophets from Isaiah
down to the latest composers of apocalyptic. A
parting of the ways as to the purpose and result of
the redemption and restoration of Israel : was that
to herald the victory and domination of the Jewish
nation over the peoples of the earth ? or was it in-
tended as a sign to the peoples and the means of
spiritual regeneration for the world ? These twin
conceptions wrestled with each other through Israel's
centuries. The one met with overthrow from the
legions of Titus and of Hadrian : the other led to
Christ.

CHAPTER VI •
THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT IN GREEK POETRY

TT is through no accident that what survives of
•*• the literature of Israel is religious and turned
toward God, while the great surviving literature of
Greece has to do with the wisdom and goodliness of
man; for the spiritual stress of either people ac-
corded with the literature that has happily come
down to us. Different principles of life, and different
ways of arriving at them, made the Greek race
illustrious and sanctified the Jew. In Judea, the
ways and commands of Yahweh were the sanction
of conduct and the crown of life. In Greece, man's
adjustment of his life with its anxieties and control-
ling destinies was by no means unrelated to concep-
tions of the gods and the sovereign will of Zeus ; but
it was more constantly moulded through a rational
consideration of whatever lay open to perception,
and could make part of human knowledge, and be
tested by human reason.

The Greek drew confidence and certitude from
his temperament and the eagerness of his desires,
from consideration of events, and from reflection
upon their source and moving causes; also from

121

122 DELIVERANCE

the serenity arising through the exercise of his body
and the intending of his mind. The deed accom-
plished, or the broad explanatory thought reflected
on, could free the Greek from hampering fears,
and constitute for him that liberty of life and action
which is felicity and peace.

One will find the Greek adjustment as many-
sided as the Greek nature, and as manifold as Greek
desires. Its varied phases may be followed from
Homer, through the lyrical and dramatic poets, to
the philosophers. The epic freedom sounding in
the heroic temper is succeeded by the more analyti-
cally conceived, but still heroic, serenity of the
perfect deed of which Pindar sings. One passes
readily to the fateful consideration of conduct with
^schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. But the
adjustment of the philosophers seemingly rests on
another principle — the satisfaction which for minds
capable of large detachment lies in sheer considera-
tion of the universe and man. Yet an Hellenic
kinship extends through these adjustments, and a
progress will be perceived from those which are
simple and almost physical, to those which rest on
thought.

Our strict concern is with that adjustment with
life and the powers of life which constitutes spiritual
freedom. But Greece lures us to wander and ad-
mire. Her manifold excellences are so pleasant,
so provocative of comment. How can one speak

THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 123

of Homer without dwelling on the grandeur of the
Epics, the beauty and elevation of their diction,
the living power and measured swiftness of their
narratives, their glowing scenes of life and character,
all making up that glorious tale of Troy ?

Yet the very excellence of the Epics, the full
round of humanity which they set forth, their way
of making all things great and beautiful, the eager-
ness and power of the Heroes, the love of beauty
inherent in the poems and in the minds of the
dramatis personoe, are all pertinent to the Homeric,
which is to say, the Heroic, adjustment. Through
courage and power of resolve, rather than in their
conscious reasoning, Achilles and Odysseus, or
Hector and Diomede, present the heroic adjustment
with life's fated limitations. And so it is with
"Homer" himself, that is to say, with the Epics
and their way of inculcating wisdom, not so much by
maxim, as by setting forth the tragic courses of
events, with some unavoidable pointings of the tale.
The narrative itself is pregnant with reflection upon
life.

The Homeric adjustment is swung between the
realisation (in every sense of the word) of the great-
ness of man and the shortness and pain of human
life. The negative pole is conspicuous enough :
"even as the generations of leaves are the genera-
tions of men"; men are heavy-fated, Svcmpvot; the
gods speak of them as "wretched mortals." The

124 DELIVERANCE

most splendid lives may be the most grievously
stricken. "For the gods have made it the lot of
wretched mortals to live in affliction while they are
without sorrow. Two jars stand on the floor of
Zeus filled with evil gifts, and another with blessings.
He to whom Zeus gives a mingled lot, at one time
encounters evil, at another good. But him to whom
Zeus gives of the evil kind he makes a wretch of;
hunger drives him over the broad earth, and he
wanders honoured neither by gods nor men." So
speaks Achilles to Priam; and both knew. The
gods interfere to direct the counsels of men, and
aid or thwart their endeavours. The masterful will
of Zeus intertwines with fate, which is the dumb
necessity of things in their common courses, or the
appointed, if sad, event of some heroic life.

The positive pole of the adjustment is fixed in the
dpe-n} and iriwny, the virtus and prudentia, the
temper and consideration of the heroes. With each
man it is set in the intensity of his passions and
desires, in his imaginative or beautifying enhance-
ment of the objects of his wishes, in his strength of
will to obtain them, in fine, in his greatness of charac-
ter. Yet the broad and balanced view belonging to
conscious reasoning is rarely absent. For example,
the recurring note in the character of Sarpedon, the
Lycian king and son of Zeus, is ai'Sws, which is the
inbred sense of honour with its complement of shame
at all things shameful. Whenever Sarpedon ap-

THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 125

pears, cuSw? is the motive of his conduct, even as
when he calls to the Lycians broken before Patroclus,
" Shame on you Lycians; where are you running ?
Courage ! I will withstand the man." Before
this day when he went forward to his fate, he had
urged on the pensive Glaucus with words which
give the argument of this instinct of his nature :
'Why, Glaucus, is high honour paid to thee and me
in Lycia, and all look on us as gods ? and why do we
hold a rich and fair domain by the banks of Xanthus ?
For this we must meet the hot fight with the fore-
most, that the cuirassed Lycians may say, not in-
glorious are our kings who rule in Lycia and eat
fat sheep and drink sweet wine. Child ! if by shun-
ning this battle we should be freed from age and
death, I would not fight nor send you into the
combat. But since death's myriad shears beset us
always, and no man can escape, let us on, and win
fame or give it."

Throughout the Epics it is manifest that the sum
of a man's impulses, which is his character, is the basis
of his opinions and the source of his determination
and conduct. Statement and argument are the
justification of what his nature has determined.
His more intellectual faculties give articulate form to
his instinctive adjustment with the powers that con-
strain his lot. Yet character still intensifies the
thought and ennobles the expression of it.

Take the great instances : Hector, Achilles,

J26 DELIVERANCE

Odysseus, Helen ! Bunyan might have named
the first of these "Greatheart." Courage, devotion,
magnanimity, determine Hector's acts and form
his adjustment with his fate, ignorant as he is when
the gods will slay him at the hands of the Greeks.
Through these qualities he is Troy's defence; they
likewise transform his disapproving words to Paris
into an exhortation to do the duty of a prince.
He talks to Helen with the kindliest courtesy;
and one cannot speak of the scene with Andromache
without drawing it down to the level of our poorer
words. A high sense of shame impels him to
action, well knowing that the day will come when
mighty Troy shall perish ; and his dearest grief is the
fate that then will fall on his wife and child. Yet
he comforts Andromache with the pale thought
that no one shall send him to Hades before his time,
nor has coward or brave ever escaped his fate. So
he answers the cautious Polydamus that he cares not
whether the vultures rise on the right hand or the
left ; he trusts the will of Zeus and the best omen,
which is to fight for one's country. Evidently
Hector's adjustment with what fate had in store for
him is fixed in his courage and temper.

The same is true of a greater hero, whose life
is held in fate more definitely than Hector's. The
grandeur of the Homeric Achilles should be measured
by the greatness of the qualities that are his, and by
the moving beauty of their unison in this being so

THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 127

passionate, yet strong in self-restraint, cruel in
wrath, tender in love of friend, convulsive in grief,
in revenge a raging bane, in sorrow passing the com-
prehension of other men, then graciously pitying,
and withal endowed with the faculty of true consider-
ation. His decisions spring from the heroic temper,
from the passion for brave conduct and the glory of
it. He could not but make the hero's choice of
warfare around mighty Troy, rather than long
life. He was easily first in deeds among the Achaeans
until outrage was put on him by Agamemnon.
Then anger thrusts glory from his mind; and
under its dulling influence he thinks it were better
to sail home to Phthia, comfort himself with a
wife, live those long years once conditionally prom-
ised him, and for a time escape the stricken lot of
Shades. His mind may have been turning, through
those hours while he sat quieting his mood by singing
the famous deeds of men. But when he hears the
words of the Envoys asking aid, anger against Aga-
memnon again possesses him, and his indignation
takes the form of that high argument with which he
answers and refuses. Its impetus carries him on
to declare that all the wealth of Ilium is no pay for
the life of man — " Kine may be had for the harry-
ing, and tripods and horses, but the breath of man
comes back neither by raid nor foray, when it once
has passed the barrier of his teeth. My mother,
Thetis of the silver feet, said that one of two different

128 DELIVERANCE

fates is bringing me to my death : if, staying here,
I fight about the city of the Trojans, my return is
cut off, but my fame will be imperishable ; but if I
sail home to my own country, my good fame perishes,
but my life shall be long.'1

Imagine Achilles actually sailing away from the
war ! The thought leaves him with the violence of
his anger. Glory and an early death had been his
choice before; and after Patroclus has fallen, when
Thetis tells him his fate will follow upon Hector's,
though moved, he answers : 'Then let me die,
since I did not ward off death from my comrade. He
perished far from his home, and lacked me to defend
him. But now, since I shall not return to my own
country, neither was I a light of refuge to Patroclus
or the many others who were overcome by divine
Hector, but sit by the ships a burden to the earth,
may strife perish from among gods and men ! . . .
I go to meet Hector the destroyer of that dear head :
and I will take my death whenever Zeus wills to
bring it to pass, and the other gods. For not even
the might of Heracles escaped death, though dearest
of all to Zeus; but fate overcame him and Hera's
hate."

Achilles knows his greatness and his mortality.
It is as in words of remorseless fate that he refuses to
spare Priam's son, Lycaon : "Fool, speak not to me
of ransom ! until Patroclus met his fatal day, it was
my pleasure to spare the Trojans, and many I took

THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 129

alive and sold. But now there is not one that shall
escape death, whom the God gives into my hand
before Ilium. But, friend, even thou must die.
Why dost thou wail ? Patroclus is dead, a far
better man than thou. Dost thou not see how big
I am and goodly ? — sprung from a noble father
and a goddess bore me ? But upon me as well as
thee lie death and heavy fate. It may be in the
morning or the afternoon or mid-day, when some one
shall take my life with cast of spear or arrow."

Besides the heroic temper and the mental sight
which is clear as to the event of every life, there is
in Achilles a further nobility of motive, rising, if one
will, from a sense of life's finer fitnesses and the
reverence due to its pitiableness. As the passions
of grief and vengeance spend themselves, a calm
comes to him through obedience to the gods and
pity for the sorrows of Priam. When the old man
has clasped the hands which have slain his son, and
Achilles, weeping for his own father and his dead
friend, has raised him up and spoken those words
of high consideration of the lot of man, has placed
Hector's body on the wagon, then with the story of
Niobe he induces in himself and Priam the tragic
calm arising from contemplation of the calamities of
men in their larger aspects.

The heroic temper is also a constant element in
the adjustment presented by Odysseus, but with
an equally constant weighing of life's values. His
K

130 DELIVERANCE

adjustment is that of the heroic intelligence. It is
achieved by the steadfastness and right action of
a much-experienced man, who acts with veritable if
canny heroism, with loyalty to his comrades and a
full sense of what it behooves him their leader to
dare and do for them — the sense of ac&os. His
hero-spirit flashes ever and anon; never inoppor-
tunely. For his nerve is iron. As in the hollow
horse he had kept the chiefs from crying out on
hearing Helen's voice, so in rags in his own house
he can keep his counsel, bear the wooers' insults,
watch the shameless maid-servants, and still hold
his hand: '' Endure, heart! A shamefuller thing
didst thou bear on that day when Cyclops devoured
thy brave comrades. Then thou didst endure till
thy cunning brought thee out from the cavern where
thou thoughtest to die."

Odysseus' words always carry the wisdom of
experienced intelligence; his admonitions express
the convictions of a mature right-minded man.
Thus he warns the least evil of the wooers : "Am-
phinomus, you seem to me intelligent and the son
of a good father; so listen to me and consider.
Nothing is feebler than man of all that earth
nourishes. He thinks ill will never come on him,
so long as the gods give him hardihood and sustain
his knees ! But when the blessed gods bring woes
on him, he bears them also, though unwilling ! . . .
Therefore let no man be wicked, but let him possess

THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 131

in silence the gifts of the gods, whatever they may
give."

No man excelled Odysseus in wisdom or in sacri-
ficing to the gods : the two go together. With
reverence for the heavenly powers, he checks the
shrill joy of the old nurse at the death of the wooers :
'In thy heart, old woman, rejoice, nor cry aloud.
It is impious to exult over slain men. These the
doom of the gods overcame and their evil deeds;
for they respected no man. . . . Wherefore through
their wickedness they have met a shameful fate."
Thus the wisdom of Odysseus takes measure of
the heavenly powers.

Perhaps the highest chord of the whole Hellenic
adjustment also murmurs in the Odyssey — the
joy of satisfying human curiosity, and knowing
things. It is the opening note of the poem : "Tell
me, muse, of the man, the ready one, who wandered
far after he had destroyed the mighty citadel of
Troy, and saw the cities of many men, and learned
to know their mind." Wherever the hero is cast,
he is eager to find out what manner of men live
there. Bound to the mast, he listens to the Siren-
song — attuned to answer his own nature: "Oh !
come hither, renowned Odysseus, glory of the
Achaeans; stop the ship and hear our voices.
For none has ever driven past in his black ship
till he has heard from our lips the sweet song, but,
having enjoyed it, he sails on, and knowing more.

132 DELIVERANCE

For we know all things — whatever in the broad
land of Troy, Argives and Trojans suffered at the
will of the gods; and we know whatever happens
on the teeming earth."

And still another more pervasive conception
gave finish and a proportionment of values to the
Homeric adjustment — the thought of beauty, that
which is KaXovy a thought embracing all things
physical, passing over into the sphere of the mind,
and finally reflecting Homer's judgement as to what
was right and proper, most broadly well for man.
The thought of beauty becomes the reflex of Homer's
broadest wisdom. We may even take it as the
moving principle which built the Epics, gave them
their mighty plan, their splendid movement, their
episodic propriety, and perhaps that verity of in-
cident, discourse, and event, through which they
exemplify life's facts and teaching. Homer's people
apply the thought of beauty to the human form and
visage, to trappings and utensils, arms and armour,
horses and chariots, to the lyre of Apollo and the
voices of the Muses, to human speech and conduct.

Beauty, like greatness, may justify and vindicate.
That which not only was seen in Helen's face, but
inhered in every word and act, raised her above
blame. Her mortal grace forbade reproach. She was
divine among women. So Achilles was justified
by his greatness, uplifted above common judge-
ment, but not above mortal fate. Homer was too

THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 133

wise to condemn great beings, save upon considera-
tion of all their attributes. His ethics included the
proportionment of everything entering life. Helen
speaks of herself and Paris "on whom Zeus has
set such an evil fate that we shall be a theme of
song to men in times to come." Justification, as
well as adjustment, rises from that beauty or that
greatness which is its own excuse for being and
makes a theme of song — a joy to men, a heightening
of knowledge, an expansion of thought. Herein is
the vindication of Achilles, of Helen, and the fate
of Troy —

GI//I/XOV oi/fiTeXeoTOv, oov jcAcog ov -TTOT* oAetrou.1

The content which the common man finds in his
daily work or occupation is his practical adjustment.
The strenuous man proceeds more vigorously, and
the high-minded man more ideally, trying to ac-
complish what seems the best to do, or attain, or be.
This endeavour constitutes his working satisfaction ;
herein lies his spiritual freedom — his freedom to
fulfil his nature, his release from fear, his actual
adjustment with life and the eternal ways. Such an
adjustment represents the kinetic principle, the
Aristotelian eve/>yeta, man's highest energy wherein
he enters on an efficient unison with his best ideals,
attains his freedom and his peace — may even

1 //., II, 325. Late and late accomplished, the fame of which
shall never fade.

134 DELIVERANCE

reach the working peace of God which passes under-
standing.

From such a point of view, one may regard the
Greek poetic and artistic adjustment, of which
the Homeric was the elemental stage. In Hesipd,
in the greater lyrists, in the dramatists, at least
until Euripides, the elemental poetic adjustment
of Homer advances to deeper consciousness, with
little change of principle or motive. Like all
serious adjustments, whether sounding in active
human energy or in contemplation, the adjustment
presented in the higher modes of Greek poetry
proceeded from an estimate of the facts of human
life, their relative permanence, their proportionate
values, the possibilities of their attainment, the
happiness therefrom arising, and the fitting principles
of conduct and regard.

The Greek poetic adjustment accepted the bounds
of mortality, while perceiving the greatness of
man although held within them. It sprang from
the heroic temper, worked itself out through heroic
valour and intelligence, and rested in heroic achieve-
ment. Primarily heroic, it remained royal or aris-
tocratic, suited to those whose nature and position
set them above the common mass. Yet as it recog-
nised mortality's limitations, its deepest ethics lay
in its insistence on the retribution overtaking those
who insolently would reach beyond, or impiously
transgress the principles of righteousness, which were

THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 135

thought to rest upon the sanction of the gods, of
Zeus above all.

All this is in Homer; but is developed with
varied temperamental color and profound considera-
tion by Pindar and ^Eschylus and Sophocles. Be-
fore them had come Hesiod, reputed the most
terre-d-terre of the Greek poets — an honest and
religious soul. Impressed with the value of just
dealings among men, he believed that Zeus and the
other gods observed just and evil deeds, rewarding
the one and punishing the other. The just prosper,
their city flourishes, peace is in their borders, their
land bears its crops, their sheep are heavy with
wool, their wives bear children like their parents;
while ill-fortune comes to the wicked (Works, 255
sqq.). Not for long could the Greeks hold to this
old crass conviction (for a while held by the Jews !),
which further reflexion must show to be faulty.

Nearer to Pindar were the earlier lyrists, those
who uttered their keen notes of restless but not
unmeasured daring, like Archilochus and Alcaeus;
those who were saddened or embittered over life's
mortality, like Mimnermus, or Theognis, in some
of the verses bearing the latter' s name : — as for
Sappho, the flames of passion and the love of beauty
made the summit of her being. Apparently the
best adjustment in these poets clung to the principle
of Measure — the widely applicable thought of /ui/Sev
, which reverted to Hesiod's injunction to ob-

136 DELIVERANCE

serve measure, and his famous saw, "the half is
better than the whole."

Pindar's thought of life, its possibilities and satis-
factions, its adjustment with its fated bounds, is
more complete. He is in the line from Homer,
prizing all the qualities — for the most part coming
from <£va, one's inborn nature — which fill out man's
greatness, and not those alone which are more
especially ethical. He holds to strength and beauty,
swiftness, valour, bravery, and apt intelligence;
also the wealth and position proper to greatness :
an aristocrat altogether. But let not wealth and
power overween ! It behooves man to seek things
suitable (eotKora), such as are meet for mortals,
knowing where his feet must come ! 1 And what-
ever be his valour or his wit, let him not boast, but
remember that success comes from the gods : it is
Zeus that gives or withholds.2 Yet success — from
the gods — comes only to those who have striven.
Toil and effort — by these means victory is won,
and happiness, though man be a thing of a day!
From victory comes forgetfulness of toil and anxious-
ness and death. There are values which do not
sound in permanence — like the perfect instant,
the perfect deed ! That has absolute worth trans-
cending its own briefness ; and, crowned by victory,
it brings the high mood which is the zenith for
mortals, and makes the doer's adjustment with

lPyth., Ill, 59 sqq. * Pyth., Ill, 103 ; Isth., IV, 50.

THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 137

life's limitations and the Powers which set them.1
Beyond this, there is also the report which lives after
a man, and reveals his life to the poets, which is
fame.

Pindar is unrivalled in his phrased sententiousness.
And yet more splendidly his fourth Pythian ode
exemplifies these principles in action, telling the
glorious story of Jason and the Golden Fleece,
through which breathes the living truth of the
Pindaric adjustment, drawing its being from the
perfect deed.

^Eschylus was a Titan dominated by moral and
religious principles : crimes entail punishment ;
right conduct cannot wreck the doer; the Mean is
safest ; great prosperity does not of itself bring over-
throw, but is apt to beget insolence, with the en-
suing round of crime and ruin. These convictions
were rooted in faith in the punitive and benign rule
of Zeus and the subsidiary divine potencies. The
gods will cast down the proud man who has sinned,
and his overweening children; but suffering shall
bring wisdom to those who act aright, although they
are involved in the fatal dilemmas of a blood-
stained house. This is Zeus's law — a stern fore-
runner of Plato's thought and Paul's announcement,
that to them who love God all things work to-
gether for good. The ^Eschylean adjustment lies
in adherence to these ethical and divine principles,

M, 97; 11,56; VIII, 72.

138 DELIVERANCE

this sequence of the Zeus-supported power of the
act working itself out even in pain and blood.
Man's proper freedom of action lies within the
constraint of these laws; which are incarnate in
the story of the house of Atreus.

The Agamemnon opens with the weariness of the
watchman on the roof at Argos, and the boding
anxiousness of the chorus, which is checked rather
than lifted by the announcement that Troy has
fallen. Too much evil conduct has gone before
to allow a happy issue to those enmeshed in this
crime-spotted web. Sorrow ! Sorrow ! may the
good prevail ! — The chorus can throw off their
burden only through appeal to Zeus, who leads
mortals to be wise, who has set through suffering
the path of wisdom — a kindness enforced. To
have summoned Greece to general slaughter for
one guilty woman ! — a fit prelude to the fatal
dilemma of the fleet, wind-bound at Aulis, and
no release except through sacrifice of the guilt-
less for the guilty, of Iphigeneia to win back
Helen ! That was a sin, by whatsoever stress of
need entailed.

The first report is made certain: The Greeks
have taken Troy — surely the stroke of Zeus on
Paris and on Priam's city. There is no stronghold
for him who tramples on sanctities, and in the
arrogance of wealth spurns the altar of justice.
But what if the guilty have been guiltily destroyed

THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 139

by the avengers ? In the place of living men, how
many urns of ashes have come back from Ilium ! —
men fallen because of another's wife ! Heavy with
anger is the city's voice, filling the function of a
public curse. How dangerous is too much glory !
Let me neither a captive nor a spoiler be !

It is unnecessary to sketch the action of this (as
many think) greatest of all tragedies. It is enough
to observe the sequence of recurring crime and
more unrighteous vengeance. Clearer becomes the
old men's view of that flower of loveliness, that
fawning lion's cub of doom, Helen, bane to city,
man, and ship. It is not prosperity that brings
retribution; the righteous house may remain fair
and blessed ; it is the sinful act that begets children
like itself; the old v/fyis, when the time is ripe,
engenders a new v/fyis in the wicked which is their
doom.

The sequence is quite clear. Cassandra's cry,
her utterance becoming more articulate, till she lays
bare the tale of ancestral crime, handed on from one
generation to another, through conduct never free
from guilt — this backward-reaching forward-reach-
ing vision, which raises the Agamemnon to the sum-
mit of all tragedy, makes plain the scheme of the
^Eschylean adjustment. She scents the track of
crimes done long before, sees the harsh chorus of
Erinyes, drunk with human blood, not to be cast
out, still chanting that primal impious act, the

140 DELIVERANCE

brother's couch defiled, and then those children
slaughtered by their kin, holding out hands filled
with flesh, a dish for their own father.

It is thus that the cursed act, an infection for
the unborn wicked, passes on through blood ; and
now with Agamemnon's murder, in which likewise
is the will of Zeus, it seizes the blood-guilty Cly-
temnestra, vaunting her crime, entangling herself
in that same curse which she points to as her ex-
culpation.

The Furies are not yet appeased; they shall
become those of a mother slain; and then, after
purification of the slayer, shall change from curses
to potential blessings, from Erinyes to Eumenides.
Through the drama of vengeance and that of excul-
pation, the Choephoroi and the Eumenidesy the old
Greek point of view is to be seen : the mandates
and threats of the murdered Agamemnon (through,
rather than by virtue of, the oracle of Apollo)
drive Orestes to kill Clytemnestra ; the son who
fails to avenge his father shall be eaten by disease,
disowned by all, and cast out from the city to perish
vilely.1 When Orestes is about to kill the murderess,
she threatens him with the "'hounds of a mother's
hate"; at which he demands how can he escape

1 Choeph., 261 (269) sqq. A considerable part of the Choephoroi
consists of Electra's and Orestes' invocation of the dead Agamem-
non and the mighty curses of the slain to aid them in their ven-
geance.

THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 141

his father's, if he forbear to kill her ? (Choeph.,
910 (925)). When the deed is done, Orestes states
in justification that he killed his mother, his father's
murderess and an abomination to the gods; and
adduces the oracle of Apollo that he should be
without blame if he did it, but subject to penalties
unnameable if he forbore. With a suppliant's
branch, he will go, as Apollo bade him, to the god's
shrine for refuge. And he rushes out, pursued by
his mother's Furies.

At the opening of the Eumenides, Clytemnestra's
Furies are asleep around Orestes seated at the cen-
tral altar of the temple. He has undergone the pre-
scribed rites of purification. Apollo enters with the
words, 'I will not fail thee," and sends him to
Athens under Hermes' guard, there finally to be
freed. Orestes leaves the temple as Clytemnestra's
ghost rouses the sleeping Furies in pursuit.

Orestes comes to Athene for a final decree of
justification, in order that his mother's Furies may
cease from troubling him while living, or when he
has passed to Hades, a great corrector of impiety
below the earth. In a tremendous ode, the Furies
chant the ^Eschylean ethical sequence, fearful as
they are lest the old laws be made null, and all
restraint removed from crime, if Orestes be ac-
quitted : "There are times when fear is well, abiding
as a warder of the mind. Wisdom through suffer-
ing profits. What man, what city, freed from

142 DELIVERANCE

dread, will revere justice ? Praise thou neither the
despot-ridden nor the lawless state. Everywhere
God gives might to the Mean. From impiety is
born insolence; but from health of mind that for-
tune much prayed for, dear to all. I counsel thee,
always revere the altar of right, nor spurn it with
godless foot, thine eyes set on gain. For punish-
ment shall follow, and the fitting end awaits. . . .
He who, unforced, is just, shall not be unblest, and
never can be utterly destroyed. But the rash
transgressor shall in time haul down his yard-arms
broken; he calls on those who do not hear in the
storm, while the god laughs at the man of boasts,
who, failing to weather the point, is wrecked on the
reef of Justice, and perishes/' l

The judgement of Athene, on grounds quite curious
to us, takes the case of Orestes out of this sweep of
retribution, this sequence whose validity is in no
way impugned by the turn of the drama; while
the Furies (Erinyes) are placated and won to dwell
beneath the Areopagus, as the Eumenides, awarders
of blessings for the righteous people of Athene.

Character, good or bad, a criminal or benevolent
disposition, either philosophically viewed or tragi-
cally treated, is part of the broad matter of human
freedom and responsibility, and their compatibility
with fate or the divine will or foreknowledge. In-

.y 490-565, condensed.

THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 143

herited tendencies, the sins of the fathers visited
upon the children, even the specific curse entailed,
may be regarded as possible elements of our uni-
versal mortality, passing down from generation to
generation. A Greek tragedy might present such
elements of life through the spectacle of the un-
happy turns of human lot occasioned by them ; but
its mode of treatment did not solve, so much as
deepen and render terrible, the mystery of their
action, ethical, divine, physical, or quasi-physical.

Having sought in the great trilogy of u^Eschylus
for what seemed his mind's adjustment with the
powers of retribution and reward, we turn to look
for the peace of Sophocles in those of his dramas
which have to do with the unspeakable deeds of
CEdipus and the fate of his house. The adjustment
presented by their chief characters is noble and
beautiful. It also is heroic, resting in that high
conduct and temper which belong only to great men
and women. It is thus in line with the Homeric
and ^Eschylean adjustment, being established in the
might of a rational and temperamental adherence
to powers and principles held to be the most potent
and the best. Its peace is made firm through con-
stancy of noble mood, rather than through the
reasoning processes which support it.

This path of surest satisfaction, which in freedom
of soul a man may tread, is presented in the first
strophe of the ode chanted by the chorus when the

144 DELIVERANCE

drama of (Edipus the King has reached its final
stress of tension, and the discovery is imminent :
"May destiny still find me winning the praise of
reverent purity in all words and deeds sanctioned
by those laws of range sublime, called into life
throughout the high clear heaven, whose father is
Olympus alone ; their parent was no race of mortal
men, no, nor shall oblivion ever lay them to sleep;
the god is mighty in them, and he grows not old." l
So long as man fulfils this prayer, he is possessed
of the best that comes to man ; with peace in his
soul, he is in accord with the mightiest arbiters of
his destiny. But (Edipus unwittingly, and yet
because he was himself, has shattered these laws
through deeds which the tongue refuses to utter.
It may be that no man is evil through unwitting
sin; and that toward such, men's anger softens
(Soph. Frag., 599; Track., 727). Yet all the absolv-
ing powers of life cannot make (Edipus as if he had
not done these deeds; and as the deeds cannot be
undone, neither can the consequences involved in
them — any more than when a blind man steps off
a precipice, one born blind, say, for a parent's sin !
As easy can a man cease to be himself as throw off
the entailments of his acts. He can only live them
out, as he lives out his life. So the (Edipus at
Colonus comes as the drama of the close of a long
expiation, no paltry exculpation by foolish or angry

1 (Ed. Tyr.y 863-871. Jebb's Translation.

THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 145

argument; though as against a shameless accuser,
(Edipus can free himself from blame quite over-
whelmingly : 'Bloodshed — incest — misery — all
this thy lips have launched against me, — all this
that I have borne, woe is me ! by no choice of mine :
for such was the pleasure of the gods, wroth, haply,
with the race from of old. Take me alone, and
thou couldst find no sin to upbraid me withal, in
quittance whereof I was driven to sin thus against
myself and against my kin. Tell me, now, — if,
by voice of oracle, some divine doom was coming
on my sire, that he should die by a son's hand, how
couldst thou justly reproach me therewith, who was
then unborn, whom no sire had yet begotten, no
mother's womb conceived ? And if, when born to
woe, as I was born, I met my sire in strife, and slew
him, all ignorant what I was doing, and to whom,
— how couldst thou justly blame the unknowing
deed ?" !

Thus the blind old man strikes away the ground
from his accuser's feet; but not thus would he cut
the ground away from fact. He had said with
deeper truth: "My deeds have been sufferings
rather than acts." Long fellowship with sorrows,
and a noble nature have brought resignation.
Through bearing thus the consequences of his deeds,
he attains his peace. At last he is accepted by the
Powers which absolve and consecrate. At the

1 (Ed. Co/., 962-977. Jebb's Translation.
L

146 DELIVERANCE

thunder signal, understood by him, he rises, and
with no need of guidance for his sightlessness, moves
onward to the place where he may hide his life with
the dead, or rather where, somehow from the gods,
the lower world opens for him in kindness, without
pain: his passing "was not with lamentation or in
sickness and suffering, but above mortal's won-
derful."

After the death of GEdipus, the accursed frat-
ricidal struggles of his sons were doomed to come,
and draw to a devoted death that perfect flower of
Greek womanhood, Antigone. Like the tale of
GEdipus or Agamemnon, her story needs no telling.
Antigone's adjustment was Antigone; it lay in her
character, her essential being; an adjustment of an
heroic woman's perfect devotion, her perfect follow-
ing of the best. Its power was her high constant
mood, supported by the reasonings of her mind, but
scarcely needing them. Though death must follow,
there is neither hesitation nor need of any prior
dialectic stimulation in her resolve to bury her
brother's corpse. She, being herself, could not fail
so to resolve and act, — KaXov /xot rovro TTOLOVO-Y) 6a.vei.Vy
she tells her weaker sister, Ismene : 'Well for
me to die doing this; as a loved one I shall lie
with him, a loved one, sinless in my crime; since
what I must do to satisfy the dead is for a longer
time than what is owed the living : there I shall lie
forever." And when the helpless act is done, and

THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 147

Antigone is to die, she bids Ismene, now vainly
seeking to have part with her: 'Be of good cheer;
thou livest; but my soul died long ago, so that I
might serve the dead."

The drama turns upon the conflict between the
ruler's decree, the law proclaimed by man, and those
higher laws and sanctities established in the divine
order, — which Roman jurists and the Middle
Ages were to recognise as the lex naturalis. They
have been acclaimed in the (Edipus Tyrannus ; and
now as against Kreon's decree, which Antigone
admits having wilfully disobeyed, she appeals to
them : 'For it was not Zeus that had published me
that edict ; not such are the laws set among men by
the justice who dwells with the gods below; nor
deemed I that thy decrees were of such force, that
a mortal could override the unwritten and unfailing
statutes of heaven. For their life is not of to-day
or yesterday, but from all time, and no man knows
when they were first put forth.

"Not through dread of any human pride could I
answer to the gods for breaking these. Die I must,
— I knew that well even without thy edicts. But
if I am to die before my time, I count that a gain :
for when any one lives, as I do, compassed about
with evils, can such a one find aught but gain in
death ?

"So for me to meet this doom is but a trifling
grief; but if I had suffered my mother's son to lie

148 DELIVERANCE

in death an unburied corpse, that would have
grieved me." 1

To disobey a ruler's decree, in order to follow the
law of conscience, seemed to the chorus of old
Thebans, even in this clear case, a questionable
course. A halting sympathy, tending to disap-
proval, leaves Antigone hapless, despairing almost,
as she is led to her living tomb, "unwept, unfriended,
without marriage-song." Unhappy, she is still
convinced, — if these judgements of men are pleas-
ing to the gods, why, she may learn her fault here-
after ! Her last utterance is of noblest poise and
truth : ' Behold, princes of Thebes, the last daugh-
ter of your kings, what I suffer, and from whom,
because I revere piety." That was her adjustment.

As an expression of the human adjustment with

•

the powers controlling human destiny, sculpture
and painting cannot be as definite as poetry, which
has language for its medium. Nevertheless, for
those who have the interpretive imagination, an
impressive temperamental adjustment lies in the
remains of the noblest Greek sculpture : that of the
greatness of man in spite of fate, and with an added
element of serenity, which it is sculpture's preroga-
tive to express in a pre-eminent degree.

The remains of the sculptures of the Parthenon
exemplify this adjustment. Their general theme

1 Ant., 450-468, Jebb's Translation.

THE HEROIC ADJUSTMENT 149

was the greatness of Athens, attained (according to
the fond Periclean-Phidian ideal) through rever-
ence for the gods as well as through human intelli-
gence, valour, and self-sacrifice; and a greatness
likewise to be rejoiced in fittingly and righteously.
On the east pediment, Athene breaks into full and
potent being ; on the west, she conquers Poseidon in
vindication of her pre-excellent claim to be recog-
nised as the goddess of Athens. The metopes show
Olympian gods victorious over earth-born giants,
Greeks conquering Amazons, Lapiths defending the
sanctity of their marriage-festival against brutal
Centaurs, and, it may be, Athenians victorious over
Persians : victories of mind and civilisation and
freedom over their brutal or slavish opposites.

So there was rendered the divine and human
struggle through which safety and order and free-
dom were attained, and also, in Athene's birth, the
glorious inception of her city's destiny. Finally, the
frieze pictured the serene beauty of Athens' present,
her youths and stately maidens, her wise elders,
and the presence of the gods abiding there. Athens
has achieved ; in human power and in reverence
for the gods she is most bravely blessed. Rhythms
of sculptured harmony reflect the discipline and self-
control, the temperance and grace of spirit, which,
ideally viewed, formed the serene greatness of her
civic state — her corporate adjustment with her
destinies.

CHAPTER VII
GREEK PHILOSOPHERS

T3EING Greeks, the early Greek philosophers
•*-* cared for much that entered the heroic ideals
of the epic and dramatic poets. We are not to take
too narrowly their main aspiration, which was to
know and understand. For they were not recluses,
but members, often active, leading, or even revolu-
tionary, of city-states; and while they sought
knowledge for the satisfaction which lay in know-
ing, the search was well related to the business of
human living. Their human ideal looked to the
fulfilment of the whole rational man, and included
all objects which the intellect might commend.
Yet of this whole, the wisdom which is assimilated
knowledge was the noblest portion, that which in
itself could satisfy, and without which the other
human felicities either we,re unattainable, or, if
quickly grasped, were likely to prove worthless.
Knowledge was the test and standard, as well as
the necessary guide, of life.

Accordingly the deliverance of the human spirit
which lies in early Greek philosophy — its libera-
tion from anxieties unto its freest being — pertains

150

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 151

to investigation, contemplation, and reflexion, rather
than to heroic action, or to material or emotional
gratification : it is the fewp^TiKo? /Jios, the vita
contemplativa. With the very earliest of these
philosophers, this vita lay in the function of curiosity
engaged in observing, Otwpui in the primary sense
of looking at things, but with the mind's eye as well
as with the bodily organ. If one enquires what
they were looking at or looking for, it may be
answered, they were looking for the stable cause,
source rather, of the changing things about them,
including their mortal selves. That, once discerned,
would satisfy their intellectual natures, since it
would provide a basis for all life and the thought
about it; would thus prove for themselves a sure
intellectual satisfaction.

The well-known names of these men may be men-
tioned, if only to make sure that there were ideas
and temperamental elements common to them all,
which will justify some generalisation as to their
views and their adjustment. Certainly the opinions
of those first open-eyed and open-minded lonians —
Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes — did not agree;
and the thoughts of the Ephesian Heracleitus dif-
fered from them deeply. Still more fundamentally
the physics of Parmenides and Zeno differed from the
scheme of Heracleitus. They were Western Greeks,
called Eleatics after Greek Elea founded in an Italy
not yet Italian. That the hypotheses of all these

152 DELIVERANCE

men differed is not the point, but rather that they
were all impelled to investigate and consider, and
seek satisfaction in the contemplation of the world
and in the strength of their meditations.

The three first-named were citizens of Miletus, a
powerful and rich and active-minded city of Asia
Minor. Yet not alone within its walls, but through
this Ionia, both insular and of the mainland, in
the seventh and following centuries, curiosity was
sleepless, and the mind moved toward Oeupfy,
<j>i\wT<f>irj, and io-Toptrj — physical observation, specu-
lation, and the human story. Thus it was in
Ionia, and when colonies of these lonians sailed
westward, where cities might be founded in a
benignant land, far from the power of Lydians and
Persians, the colonists did not change their minds
by changing the skies above them.

The opinions of these early Greek thinkers about
the world are not to be despised, just because we
deem ourselves some points closer to the great
infinite truth of things than they. What should we
think about the world if we were to regard it newly,
with no advantage from the range of thought behind
us, including the opinions of these very men ?
From the fragmentary remains and corrupt reports
of them, it is hard to ascertain even their main
tenets, and impossible to do more than hazardously
imagine their data and methods of reasoning.
Each facet of their thinking, as when they thought

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 153

of Sun and Earth, had not the significance of the
like-named symbols, when we use them in our
thoughts. The same words have other meanings
now.

Yet one cannot read the reports concerning
them, and the fragments of their utterances, with-
out realising the largeness of their thinking; and
if their ideas seem crude and curious, we also know
how they passed into the theories of Plato and
Aristotle, to be made over or furbished up so as to
be presentable to the human mind for ever since.
And a still more vital bond between us and them
lies in the assumption, which may well be an assur-
ance, that as common intellectual appetitions tended
to unite their minds, so the circle of human unity
may readily extend to include those even among
ourselves who find contentment in research and
meditation. These men are gone, and but seeming
dust remains of the philosophies with which their
thoughts were occupied and their lives made free.
Yet it is pleasant for us, who know too many things
and not enough, to turn back to elemental hypotheses
and feel the ancestry of the men who devised them.

The first matter of the world is water, said Thales ;
and tradition assures us of the constancy with
which his mind was busied with the phenomena of
the earth and heavens, while he also abstracted his
thoughts through geometry. Likewise, apparently,
his hearer Anaximandros, and then Anaximenes,

1 54 DELIVERANCE

found satisfaction in an elemental main hypothesis,
while it is also plain that each of them kept his
mind active upon nature's curious phenomena.
What kind of investigation and imagination brought
the former to assert that living creatures came from
the moist element as it was evaporated by the sun,
and that man was like a fish in the beginning ? or
led the latter to pregnant conceptions of world-
formation through rarefaction and condensation ?
Then how did the problematic Pythagoras come by
his thought of transmigration, for example ? He,
too, took comfort in geometry and numbers, and
realised how deeply numerical relationships enter
the core of things. His possible contemporary,
Xenophanes, seems to have won his soul's content
by raising within himself an idea of God, neither in
form or thought like mortals, but sheer sight and
thought and hearing; toilless and moveless, ruling
by his thought. Did he find satisfaction also in the
sense that the gods had not revealed all things in
the beginning ? It was for man to seek and find in
time what was the better. Was not that indeed
the blessed sweat of his mind, by which he should
truly live ?

Perhaps the same was felt by the oracular Hera-
cleitus, who said that "Nature loves to hide," or
remain hidden, for the Greek verb is in the middle
voice. He lashed the stupidity of others, — of the
common many who neither know nor learn, also

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 155

even of those, reputed wise, who mistake knowing
many things for understanding; perhaps most par-
ticularly all those who would not listen to his own
satisfying doctrine that everything entrains its
opposite, becomes its opposite, and in truth is its
opposite, or at least cannot exist without its oppo-
site. There can be no One without a Many, to
speak in later phrase. Conversely, if there be a
conversely, the strife of opposites is equally an
attunement, a procreation — war is father of all.
So all things pass into each other : the world, un-
created by god or man, is an everlasting rekindling
fire-transformation : in this the God is day as well
as night, summer as well as winter, both death and
life.

Was there not enough adjustment for this man
in such a conception of the universe ? Especially
when he saw law and measure permeating the eternal
flux, and in human affairs recognised the abundant
flow of law divme from which human laws are fed,
and in the individual man perceived that his char-
acter was his fate ?

Such thoughts made this man's peace and free-
dom; as likewise did the thought of Parmenides
for him. From opposite convictions the two drew
equal satisfaction — the one resting in the concep-
tion of ceaseless change, the other in that of per-
manent and solid being. This other was grandly
reliant on his thought about things — as he thought,

1 56 DELIVERANCE

so must they be; so must Being be: "for it is the
same thing that can be thought and that can be."
Thought and thought's end or source are the same.
Hence existence, which is a moveless corporeal
plenum, conforms to the philosopher's necessary
thought of it. Comfort enough here ! There is
neither coming into being, nor passing away. It is
interesting to note that Parmenides, with his
" Greek" love of the definite, conceived his plenum
of being as a finite, though eternal, sphere. But
his follower, Melissus, saw the impossibility of
spatial limit to reality.

One is obliged to mention that strange wonder-
worker, and yet scientific investigator and philoso-
pher, Empedocles of Agragas, with his fateful four
elements, which were really six. For to the four
must be added Love and Strife, Love the mixer,
Strife the separator and refashioner — two effi-
cient causes, comments Aristotle, and yet material,
being themselves measurable portions of the brew.

The difficulty, as it would seem, of conceiving
force or agency save as a ponderable corporeal
thing, was a pregnant confusion, out of which
Greek thought was destined most profitably to rise.
The process of this evolution, as yet incomplete,
appears in the nimble and potent agency of forma-
tive creation which Anaxagoras devised and desig-
nated by the name of Nous, the Greek word for
mind. It was he who came to Athens on Pericles'

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 157

invitation, doubtless to his advantage, and yet also
to be the first of the philosophers persecuted by
that jealous and suspicious demos. Holding, as he
did, that all things are constituted of an infinite
number of infinitesimal seeds, so that all things are
in everything, and no thing is so small as not to par-
take of all, holding to this view, he felt the need of
an efficient Arranger of the infinite constituent seeds
of things, something apart from them. And thus
he describes it :

"All other things partake in a portion of every
thing, while Nous is infinite and self-ruled, and is
mixed with nothing, but is alone, itself by itself.
For if it were not by itself but were mixed with
anything else, it would partake in all things if it
were mixed with any . . . and the things mixed
with it would hinder it, so that it would have
power over nothing in the same way that it has now,
being alone by itself. For it is the thinnest of all
things and the purest, and it has all knowledge
about everything and the greatest strength ; and
Nous has power over all things, both greater and
smaller, that have life. And Nous had power over
the whole revolution, so that it began to revolve
in the beginning. And it began to revolve first
from a small beginning; but the revolution now
extends over a larger space, and will extend over a
larger still. And all the things that are mingled
together and separated off and distinguished are all

158 DELIVERANCE

known by Nous. And Nous set in order all things
that were to be, and all things that were and are
not now and that are, and this revolution in which
now revolve the stars and the sun and the moon,
and the air and the aether that are separated off.
And this revolution caused the separating off, and
the rare is separated off from the dense, the warm
from the cold, the light from the dark, and the dry
from the moist. And there are many portions in
many things. But no thing is altogether separated
off nor distinguished from anything else except
Nous. And all Nous is alike, both the greater
and the smaller; while nothing else is like any
thing else, but each single thing is and was most
manifestly those things of which it has most in

it."

Nous is thus a moving, ordering, and knowing
substance. With but a mechanical mentality it is
not yet sheer immaterial mind. Yet it is groping
thither — dreaming on thoughts to come. We
may be sure of its vital importance in the scheme of
thought wherein this philosopher found his con-
tent. And as for the man's effect, one perhaps may
say that he started the Mind on its career as Demi-
urge, and made way for the conception of the
Divine Will as Creator of the Universe.

Early Greek thought, unspiritualised in its con-

1 Translation taken from J. Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy,
p. 301 (zd Ed., 1908), to which the writer is otherwise indebted.

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 159

captions, and looking to matter as the primeval
source, might well regard matter and being as co-
extensive. Matter and no-matter, conceived as
equivalent to Being and no-Being, led to the Eleatic
denial of motion, the most universal fact of obser-
vation as well as the necessary postulate of any
explanation of the World. An escape from this
dilemma was furnished by the Atoms of Leucippus
and Democritus, infinite in number, indivisible, of
every shape, possessing the eternal and indestructible
qualities of the Eleatic Being, but separated from
each other by narrow fissures of space, and in cease-
less motion. Their falling whirl produced the
natural forms of the visible Kosmos, and even the
souls of men, which consisted of fiery atoms having
the liveliest motion.1

There is no need to say more of this mightiest
and most fruitful of all Greek physical hypotheses,
the substance of which apparently Leucippus
delivered to Democritus. But the latter extended
and coordinated and humanised philosophy as none
had done before him. How can one sum up such a

1 The notions of matter and reality or existence not having
been distinguished before Leucippus's time, he could predicate the
existence of empty space only in uncouth and equivocal terms.
He had to say that what is not (i.e. not matter) is of no less
account than what is (i.e. matter), and "that both are alike the
causes of things that come into being." Simplicius quoting
from Theophrastus — Diels, Fragmente der Forsokratiker, 2d Ed.,
Bd. I, p. 345, and trans, by Burnet, Early Greek Phil., p. 384.

l6o DELIVERANCE

man from the fragments that remain of his many
and admirable books, — of whom Aristotle says
that no one had so profoundly considered growth
and change ? His was a prodigious vision, a vision
of the mind, inductive, microscopic, penetrating to
the infinitesimal, and extending to an infinitude of
worlds beyond the range of mortal eye. It is hard
for us to make his fiery soul-atoms think; but we
are amazed at his insight into the ways of the ap-
prehending mind, as when he distinguished between
the "primary" and "secondary" qualities of objects.
Busied with physical investigations, he fruitfully
recognised the need to consider the differences
between the convincing apperceptions of the atoms
of his soul and the confusions issuing from the
atoms of sensation. Although he did not, like his
very different contemporary Socrates, try his
thought in the dialectic of definition, he formed a
canon of principles by which to discriminate between
the means and method of true knowledge and the
ways of fallacious opinion, springing from the five
senses.

Rational knowledge became for this man the
standard not only of thinking but of living. Before
its bar he endeavoured to order the contents of life,
— whatever entered into human welfare or misery.
While his fundamental physical hypotheses held to
the laws of that necessity which left no place for
divine interposition, he yet evolved from his clearly

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 161

graduated discrimination a finely spiritualised ethics.
Knowledge, virtue, happiness, were at one in his
scheme of life. "From understanding proceed good
counsel, unerring speech, and right conduct." With
him, thought and intent are always the criterion,
and the good things of the spirit are more divine.
"Happiness and misery are of the soul." A con-
tented mind makes the best life for man ; tempering
one's will to avoid the tumult of desire. "Good-
ness lies not merely in doing no wrong, but in wish-
ing to do none." "A man should be most ashamed
before himself." For all men, education in virtue
is better than the constraint of laws.

A cheerful soul was this Democritus, who said
that a "life without its festivals was a long road
without an inn to rest at." But a veritable mon-
arch in his thought was he, who desired knowledge
rather than the wealth of the Great King, and knew
that "to the wise man the whole earth is open;
for the Universe is the fatherland of a noble soul."
Thus his temper and philosophy made a large ad-
justment, a home of peace, a spring of freedom for
this great-minded man.

The immediate antecedent of Plato is Socrates;
but Plato's philosophy holds all prior and contempo-
rary Greek thought and feeling, from Thales to the
Sophists and Plato's own generation of Socrates' sup-
posed disciples, and from Homer to Euripides and
Aristophanes. A further fringing background for his

1 62 DELIVERANCE

thought is the supposed traditional wisdom of the
older Mediterranean world.

The Sophists played an educational role, and also
introduced an analytic self-consciousness into Greek
thinking. But their exaggerated insistence upon
the individual as the measure of all values, includ-
ing truth, loosed men from their proper anchorages
in moral conviction and philosophic certitude. No
veritable adjustment, no surety of spiritual freedom,
could come through such intellectual dissipation.

Save by reaction. That gained moral force and
took dialectic form in Socrates, and flowered with
many a dazzling hue in Plato. We have all known
the former from our childhood ; none the less is he
an enigma. Undoubtedly this keenest of ques-
tioners so conducted his inquiries as to lead on and
up to well-defined conceptions; and undoubtedly
in this way he deepened the self-consciousness and
self-criticism of philosophic thinking. So, no one
disputes the measured words of Aristotle which
ascribe to him the inductive method and general
concepts or definitions. We also believe that, with
unswerving ethical earnestness, he strove con-
stantly, through this method, and making use of
the resulting definitions, to arrive at laws of conduct
valid for all men, because founded on conceptions
true for all. With confidence, finally, we ascribe
to him the principle that wisdom and virtue are. the
same : true knowledge must produce right con-

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 163

duct; since no one errs or sins willingly. This, at
all events, was true of Socrates himself, and made
the basis of his adjustment in that fearless and
rational freedom of right conduct, which has held
the admiration of mankind.

Cicero's memorable statement, that Socrates
called Philosophy down from the heavens and estab-
lished her in the abodes of men, and, as we say, set
her upon the study of man, is eulogy which Socrates
may well deserve, but which, in justice, he must
share at least with Democritus and the Sophists.

A number of gifted human beings seem bound
together in the personality of Plato; and the ad-
justment wherein so manifold a nature could bring
its different faculties to harmonious action had need
to include more than one field of satisfying activity,
more than one fount of peace. Plato was hotly in
love with mortal beauty; and doubtless often had
to bridle what we of northern climes and modern
times might call his sensuality. More constantly,
however, the image-building, story-building imagi-
nation of this poet and dramatist, superseding the
importunities of sense, dispersed his passion in
poetic myths, or employed his faculties in dramas
of the mind, with plots formed from the stress and
pitfalls of dialectic. Plato's desires change and are
transfigured as they pass from the lower to the
higher planes of his nature. Its topmost needs were
those of its metaphysical energies; its sublimest

164 DELIVERANCE

insistency was as to the reality of mind and the
validity of concepts mentally visualised, and tested,
if not formed, by an argumentation which might be
destructive or constructive, severe, stupendous,
whimsical, but captivating usually, and always
carried forward by a resistlessly creative imagination.
What other man ever had such joy in the work
and play of his mind as Plato ! Here was his real
absorption, his real deliverance — that which veri-
tably made his spiritual freedom and his peace. It
satisfied him, and he trusted it. His was a great
faith. His confidence was absolute in the convic-
tions of his mind, as well as in the certainty of the
realisation of its imperative demands. Magnificent
as was his dialectic, strenuous as might be its argu-
ments, Plato's faith was pinned to none of them.
While willing to follow whither the living and breath-
ing argument might lead, he may be no more serious
in his reliance on its procedure or conclusion, than
he is upon the truth of the illustrative tales he
knows so well to weave. For, as the precursor of
all that after him might be named Platonic or Neo-
platonic, he is always conscious that no argument
can compass the whole truth — of which the
processes of dialectic mirror the broken rays.
Throughout the Dialogues, his parables, whether
parables of the poetic imagination or the less obvious
parables of dialectic, change and pass; and while
he may have been earnest with them at the time,

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 165

they remain but tentative, open to refutation, ready
to be exchanged for something truer or more illu-
minative. None the less was he insistent that his
convictions should be set in reason, should be
reasoned out through argument — if that were only
possible !

The most famous and influential form assumed by
Plato's conviction of the absolute reality of things
spiritual was the "Platonic Idea." The mind con-
templates the universals in all things, sees them
everywhere. With Plato, these type-ideas, from
existing solely in the mind, likewise transcend it,
and are beheld as absolute spiritual entities, and as
the creating shaping powers of the objects of sense-
perception — which are their creatures or images.
Noblest and realest of all is the idea of the Good,
the most absolute of ideal prototypes as well as
perhaps the most universal plalstic power. Shall it
not be as God, — the Fashioner of the World, the
Measure of all things ?

With Plato, the conceptions of the mind are like-
wise the desires of his soul. His spiritual nature
flows out to them desirously, yearning to bring
them to realisation in his soul. This is the soul's
health and well-being, its blessed happiness : to
mirror and realise within itself beauty, justice,
goodness, the excellence of every virtue. In this
realisation, this making real, are set the freedom
and the peace of Plato, the blessed mood which

1 66 DELIVERANCE

sometimes we also may gain from reading the
Phcedo or the Phcedrus, the Gorgias or the Theatcztus.
One sees how Plato's ethical convictions, whether
received from his master, or his very own, have
root in these conceptions of the mind which are also
the desires of his soul. Knowledge and Virtue are
the same : How can one know these beautiful ideas
and not desire them ? and not realise them ? Only
through knowing them imperfectly can one sin or
err. And again, even more obviously, justice is an
excellence of the soul, of man's veritable self: it is
almost a truism — if only the world would accept
it — that the unjust man cannot be in a state of
well-being, cannot be veritably happy. The best
that can come to him is to be punished, which is
to be healed. How then can one doubt that it is
better to suffer, than to do, injustice ? Or how
can any harm whatever be his who has realised
that Best within him which is the idea of the Good ?
Or, in common words, how can ill come to a good
man ? And as for truth, — is it not the verity of
the good ? how shall one not crave it and esteem it
always ?

•

Plato's freedom dwelt in these convictions, and
in his faith in them. As he grew older, he held
with increasing assurance that the world is ruled
by Mind, and not left, a chance medley, to unreason
(Philebus). Did not God create it, and create it
because he was good, and form it somehow in the

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 167

likeness of God, and with a soul throughout its
being ? (Timceus). In his earlier as well as later
Dialogues, he assumes the existence of the spiritual
when he is not engaged in proving it: the con-
viction of the reality and the eternal indestructibility
of the human soul abides with him, and he in it.
It was Plato who added this philosophic conviction
of immortality to the human adjustment lying in the
OtuprjriKos /3tbs — the search and contemplation of
truth. In one dialogue at least (Phcedo) he argues
with clear austerity that only after separation from
the body can the soul attain its fairest being in
knowledge of the truth.

The Platonic ideal, which the Platonic faith
realises and transforms into the Platonic deliverance
of the soul, lies — if one dare make any such
assertion as to this Protean genius — in the com-
plete and beautiful perfecting of the soul, which is
man's spiritual and immortal part: the perfecting
of it in the knowledge of virtue and the virtue of
knowledge; the rendering of the soul perfect and
fair, in truth and in right conduct, in geometry
and music and dialectic (with fitting conceptions of
the Universe and its Maker) as well as in courage
and justice. The things of the world of sense-
perception have their value too, giving temperate
pleasure and satisfaction to the outer man, and to
the soul as well, so long as they head no revolt
against its leadership. All these phases of human

1 68 DELIVERANCE

concern are included, and the lower subordinated
to the higher, in that consideration of life and its
regulation, which Plato wrote in his last years, and
called the Laws. It holds the soul and God
above all, and impresses one as the most devout and
religious composition of the classic world. If it
suffers somewhat from an octogenarian prolixity, it
has broader human wisdom than the much earlier
Republic. It contains the last 'turns of Plato's
thinking and will be found a storehouse of Aristo-
telianism (that virtue is a mean is in it), and later
thought.

No more than in the case of Plato, is there any
need for us to attempt a statement of the contents
of Aristotle's system. We have but to consider
the end, or rather spring, of his philosophy — the
final cause, if one will use the term, by reason of
which he philosophised, and through which this
most prodigious of philosophers found his satis-
faction.

Aristotle clearly stated his ideal of the noblest and
most satisfying, as well as the most divine, mode of
life that man can reach: and then he exemplified
this ideal in himself, and demonstrated that it held
his best freedom of action, his best activity, his
actualisation, his eVreAe'xeta, the fulfilment of him-
self in the attainment of his final end and actuality.
This was, of course, the life of mind, and pre-
eminently of the mind fixed upon the contemplation

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 169

of ultimate causes; while from this highest func-
tion of the soul, the true activities of man sloped
downward, broadening to a base of virtues which
are rooted, and also have their end, in character and
conduct.

Aristotle's intellect penetrated every province of
investigation. He drew all human knowledge to
himself, added to it from his own thinking and re-
search, and stamped the whole indelibly with the
methods through which he mastered it and the forms
in which he apprehended it. Which province
satisfied him best,' is hard to tell, even though he
says that a knowledge — the investigation — of
final causes is the most delightful. Nor, per-
haps, is it right to decide this point by the result of
his labours, estimated in the light of our present
views upon the universe and human society. Speak-
ing from this standpoint, we might term him (in
our presumption) an unhappy physicist, especially
in astronomy fatally reactionary, and blind to those
conceptions of his time which proved themselves
the best. In the further realm of metaphysics
(more properly named ontology), no one would
dare not call him great. Then in the constructive'
analysis and classification of the forms and cate-
gories of valid statement, he was, for good or ill,
for mental discipline or sterilisation, the creator of
formal logic. Further, he wrote most notably upon
the Soul or Life of man, and of its faculties and

1 70 DELIVERANCE

ways of apprehension. Then, wonderful to say,
with powers unimpeded by such preoccupations and
sometimes even detached from them, he was a great
biologist, pre-eminent as a classifier of living organ-
isms, and as a comparative anatomist and em-
bryologist. Finally, how can we think him less
interested in human society and human conduct,
and in the arts which captivate and delight men ?
— seeing that he composed a work on Ethics
rightly admired by many generations of mankind,
and a work on Politics of enormous influence, and
also works on Rhetoric and the Art of Poetry. No,
we will not presume to say in what department of
intellectual creation this stupendous Aristotle took
the keenest joy, but simply recall to mind certain
of his statements and bits of his exposition of human
nature and its proper functions, wherein he shows
at once his ideal of happiness, and the method of
his spiritual freedom.

That which man always seeks for its own sake,
as a final end, is his happiness, his well-being, —
cv&ufiovia. It is this which suffices of itself, and
makes life desirable. It is man's true self-fulfil-
ment, through the proper activity or functioning
of his nature. But his nature, or, if one will, his
life, is in part shared by the plants and the animals
other than man, all obviously below him in the scale
of being. That which is his unshared own, and the
best that is in him, is his rational intelligence,

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 171

which most clearly knows itself and is most amply
self-conscious. Or we may say this highest part of
man is the highest part of that which constitutes his
organic life, or, rather, the first stage of its actuali-
sation or fulfilment, its first evreXe^eta, to wit, his
soul. For soul, with Aristotle, is most comprehen-
sive, and means the life of the whole human organ-
ism taking its first form, entering indeed upon a
composite self-realisation, to wit, of its nutritive
and sensitive faculties, as well as its faculty of
thought.

So the highest and most peculiar and proper
part of man and of his soul or life, is intelligence.
But that, like all of life, is an activity, or at least
actualises or fulfils itself as an activity, and not as
a passive state. Life is action, and the highest
part of life consists in the self-conscious action of
the understanding. And herein consists man's
evSat/Aovwx, — his final end and happiness, — and from
our present point of view, his peace and freedom
and deliverance.

Let us make this more explicit. The rational
part of the soul or life of man, the ^v^, is twofold,
practical and contemplative. The practical if/v^
is occupied with contingent changing things, which
may be affected by our action; the contemplative
is directed to the speculative knowledge of that
which is of necessity and changeless. These psychic
faculties, termed respectively, if one will, prudence

172

DELIVERANCE

and wisdom, represent the practical, or ethical, and
the speculative virtues, though the term virtue is
usually appropriated to the former. The practical
virtues are requisite for the happiness of man as a
social animal. They do not come through instruc-
tion as much as through constant practice, thereby
becoming ingrained as habits of conduct, which,
inasmuch as they spring from reason or obey it,
are to be deemed purposeful or selective. Their
characteristic is the avoidance of excess, or the pur-
suance of the proper mean, in conformity to the
conduct and opinions of the best men. For their
practice, moreover, opportunity is needed, and some
moderate supporting share of material goods.

To a less, but still to some, degree, material goods
are needed for that highest happiness which con-
sists in the enduring activity of the speculative
reason, and has solely knowledge as its end. It is
sought for the sake of no advantage beyond itself,
and thus is free from all practical and contingent
aims. Well we know that Aristotle was a lover of
all knowledge, even of the meanest creatures and
their smallest functions. And yet this man of
universal intellectual appetition, who recognised
something wonderful in every work of nature,
desired to rise from these broad low fields of knowl-
edge of the caused and changeable to the investi-
gation and contemplation of the changeless causes,
in their uncontingent absoluteness: — surely the

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 173

freest of all sciences and the most self-sufficing, and
its votaries the freest of mankind, and the most
divine, the most like God.

For God, in Aristotle's scheme of physics and
ontology, as well as in his consideration of human
and divine happiness, is the moveless mover, draw-
ing all things through their desire for the supreme
Good that he is. But he is also the Contemplator
par excellence; and if the Contemplator, what should
be worthy of his contemplation save Himself?
Therefore the man who leads the life of knowledge
is like God, and he whose mind is fixed, so far as
may be possible for man, upon the causes of all being,
is most like God.

The highest pleasure forms part of this highest
happiness. Happiness is an active energy; and
pleasure (fj&ovrjj) is part and parcel of its true and
unimpeded action, its perfecting, its
Pleasure thus perfects (reXetbt) the energy
which is happiness and which is life. It is so closely
part of the perfect energising of the energy, that one
need not ask which is loved for the other's sake.

The progress of Greek thought did not cease with
Aristotle; but its energies separated into several
channels. Astronomy, mathematics, physics, botany,
through Theophrastus, Aristarchus, Eratosthenes,
Hipparchus, Ptolemy, Euclid, and Archimedes, were
still to make notable advance; and these pursuits
brought peace to the keen minds absorbed in

174 DELIVERANCE

them. But on the other hand, philosophy, prop-
erly or popularly so-called, lost its balanced uni-
versality. Plato and Aristotle, while profoundly
conscious of the relation of philosophic knowledge to
man's practical well-being, loved knowledge abso-
lutely, for its own sake and for the joy of it. But
Stoicism, a partial exotic, since its founder Zeno was
a Syrian, had narrower interests. It regarded
knowledge as a means ; ethics, with human well-
being as its practical end, was the real Stoical con-
cern. Altered political and social conditions were
among the causes of this change. As the city-states
gave way to huge Hellenistic kingdoms, which were
in turn to yield to Roman rule, men realised their
political impotence, and felt but a loosened interest
in public affairs. It was enough for them to keep
their lives clear of misfortune. And so philosophy,
its spirit somewhat quelled with the contracted
freedom of its votaries, turned from the search for
independent and objective truth, and concentrated
its efforts on that which should insure to the philo-
sophic individual a happy life, or one free from
pain. In Stoicism, philosophy became a palpable
adjustment of human conduct with the Stoic view
of human nature and the nature of the world, and
a self-conscious endeavour after that freedom which
is peace. The same may be said of Stoicism's
apparent opposite, Epicureanism, which was also a
sheer adjustment, and did not strive as strenuously

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 175

as its rival to base its practical principles upon a
knowledge of man and the world he dwelt in. Both
systems thus endangered the progress of that with
which they really were concerned. For whenever
the enthusiastic and apparently disinterested quest
of knowledge weakens, ethics loses the enlarging
basis of increasing wisdom needed for ethical ad-
vance.

But in the meanwhile, in its Greek periods before
it became adapted to the Roman temperament,
Stoicism looked earnestly to the constitution of the
universe for a basis of its conviction that reason is
man's essential nature, and that his sole good con-
sists in acting according to its dictates : such action
is virtue, which thus becomes a thing of reason and
of the firm will to act in accord. But human reason
is part of the reason of the universe, part of uni-
versal law, which likewise is felt to be the law or
will of God — all-ruling, all-permeating, moving
everything with purpose as with power, suiting and
harmonising each with all.

Viewing Stoicism from this end, one wonders to
find its ethics set in a materialistic conception of the
universe, including God and the human soul and
virtue itself: all being is material; the universe, in-
cluding God and man, consists of matter in a state
of tension, or, if one will, of passive matter com-
plemented by its activity of force. God is this
force or law, all-moving, all-commingling, moulding

176 DELIVERANCE

i

all things to their proper ends. The human soul is
part of this force, this law, this soul of the universe,
which is God. It is diffused like warm breath
throughout the body, and though it may for a while
continue individual after the body's dissolution, it
will eventually be resolved into the world-soul. Its
master part, its truest activity, is reason.

Thus, having doubtless leapt over many incon-
sistencies, we are back at reason and human conduct
rationally directed by the will, which is virtue and
man's sole good and happiness. All else is indif-
ferent. The emotions are to be suppressed; pleas-
ure, likewise pain, is a thing of naught. These con-
victions made the fortress of the Stoic's peace ; they
also made the sphere of his freedom, where no fear
might enter, nor tribulation disturb. Within this
sphere of freedom, the lure of pleasures and the
shackles of tyrants were alike irrelevant. Such
convictions were not merely highminded figments
of the Stoic imagination, but even formed the Stoic
practice. Yet in time, the famous Stoic apathy was
replaced by self-mastery and obedience to the will
of reason, amid pains and pleasures. These like-
wise were raised from the class of things indifferent
to that of things preferential. And all the while
the Stoic, from his recognition of the unity of the
world and the oneness of its purpose, perceived the
common brotherhood of man, and gained a wider
peace in virtuous civic conduct.

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 177

This was one sign of the coming time. Another
was the strong religiousness with which the Stoic
soul turned to the central source of virtue, the
personification of all-ruling law — God. This fer-
vour finds a voice in the devout hymn to Zeus by
Cleanthes, Zeno's successor, wherein tHe Stoic
heart has personified the all-permeating power so
that it may have some One to adore. This hymn
seems as a tentative bridge across the abysmal con-
trast between Aristotle's conception of the Un-
moved Mover sunk in self-contemplation, and the
God of the coming time, to whom men should pray
with new devotion, and in love of whom they should
win their adjustment and fulfil their lives. Yet one
may deem that there was no such great chasm
between the new-found living and loving God, and
the God of Plato's Laws.

In the meanwhile, if the tide of Stoic devotion
overflowed its logic, there was its sister of the Gar-
den, whose gods were undisturbed either by their
own beneficence or the prayers of men. Epicurus
was Zeno's younger contemporary. Both of them
were intent upon living in accord with nature (Kara
<f>v<riv) or reason; but while Zeno interpreted this
to mean Kar' d/oe-njv, or virtuously, Epicurus said
it meant *a0' ^8oi/>jv, or pleasurably. Epicurus
deemed that he had found, as well as Zeno, the peace
and quiet of the mind. For he held that the dis-
sipation of pain and anxiety insured happiness,

N

178 DELIVERANCE

and that the pleasures of the mind were surer and
more lasting than sense-joys. As for knowledge,
he made no pretence of caring for more of it than
would assure the votary of mental ease that his
calm should be undisturbed. Philosophy was but
a help to happiness. In order to provide a suffi-
ciency of conviction, it should afford a test of truth.
So Epicurus recognised sensation as the canon of
reality for man. Beyond that, the remembered and
multifariously combined images of previous sense-
perceptions make the substance of thought; what-
ever thus presents itself effectively in consciousness
is real. For a philosophy of being, he took the
atomic theory of Democritus, with its universe
constituted by the flux of atoms, and the soul of
man made of the very finest. The gods, part of
the cosmos, exist in bliss and never interfere. He
saw no ground for any other conviction than that
pleasure and pain were th,e absolute good and bad
for man. His temperament dwelt more on mental
pleasures than on bodily, and tended to set chief
store upon a state df divine calm, utterly free from
want. To this end, he wisely recognised how small
and trifling were the body's needs. And the pleas-
ure of his undisturbed and fearless repose was as
much the fruit of will and reason as the Stoic virtue.
Virtue also was desirable because pleasant; while
friendship, compassion, gentleness were among the
loveliest joys of life. Thus for himself and many

GREEK PHILOSOPHERS 179

followers he won freedom and peace of mind. But
his creed offered no bulwark against the lower
frailties of men — among whom at least it fostered
suavity.

So we have sketched the adjustment with life
offered by the love of knowledge and exercise of
reason in the minds of Greek philosophers. Begin-
ning in the contentment springing from investiga-
tion and thought upon the world's origin and laws,
this adjustment rose, with Plato and Aristotle, to
the sublimest satisfaction of consummate intellectual
appetition. But thereupon it narrowed to direct
desire for peace of soul, which perhaps is won more
surely through employing to their full the highest
energies of the mind.

CHAPTER VIII

INTERMEDIARIES

T T7E are considering the striking modes in which
great men have adjusted their hopes with
what seemed to them the possibilities of their lives ;
and if we have to touch on less salient ways of
adjustment, we may treat them as introductory to
those which appear more important in the economy
of spiritual progress. In some way, for good or
ill, each period of history prepares for that which
follows; and great men stand on the shoulders of
the great before them — only they need sturdy
shoulders for their feet. Heracleitos and his oppo-
site, Parmenides, each lent a shoulder to Plato,
affording him a vantage ground needful for his
vision, which had been cleared by the dialectic of
his master Socrates. And now still looking from
the standpoint of adjustment, we may proceed
selectively and treat all that follows after Plato and
Aristotle, and Zeno and Epicurus, as intermediate
and even mediating adjustments making for the
acceptance, if not for the origin, of Christianity.
If the Hebrew prophets were Christ's truest fore-
runners, and Jewish formalism his fulcrum of re-

180

INTERMEDIARIES l8l

pulsion, later Hellenism, moved and modified by
Eastern influences, formed the milieu in which his
Gospel was transplanted after his death ; a milieu
which both contributed to the conquering faith and
shaped it to the limitations of this milieu's own
receptiveness. Accordingly, one may truly say
that from the second century before Christ, the
course of Hellenic thought and mood, the inter-
mingling of Eastern religious influences, and the
consequent changes occurring in Roman and Greek
paganism, all made for the acceptance of that su-
preme adjustment which was Christianity.

And indeed adjustment was what the world was
seeking - - adjustment, nay, rather, assurance, and
indeed salvation. Even intellectual men no longer
found their adjustment in rational investigation, in
0eo>pia; but were seeking some spiritual stay beyond
their reason. Such men, as well as the less intel-
lectual and more emotional millions, now looked to
the assurances of religion, in order to free themselves
from anxiousness, and gain salvation. Moreover,
commonly having found their own opinions insuffi-
cient and their ancestral beliefs unsatisfying, they
were catching at whatever seemed likely to afford
assurance. Men were stirred to a new religious
receptiveness and were stimulated morally. Under
these conditions, the sharp edges of opinion were
relaxed, and opposing systems borrowed from each
other. Cults travelled from the Eastern to the

1 82 DELIVERANCE

Western boundaries of the Empire, gathering new
elements along the way, and themselves gathered
in as new elements of old beliefs. Heterogeneous
religions formed fruitful unions, while a none too
happy give and take seemed to pervade the world.
All this represented need; and the most real
answer was the Gospel of Christ, and its preaching
and ministration. Let us follow for a little these
changes, this loss of intellectual self-reliance, this
consequent yielding of thought, this mingling of
currents and more ready acceptance of novel opinions
and strange beliefs. To start from a concrete ex-
ample — Stoicism. It began, and for a while con-
tinued, as a self-reliant adjustment. Then it
softened. By admitting the decent comforts of
life as desirable, it relaxed the strictness of its main
ethical principle, that the virtuous action of a ration-
ally self-directing will is man's only good. It also
humanised its philosophic theology by recognising
the people's very human gods. Since the world
was full of divine force, why not accept these gods
as its personifications ? And why not also per-
tinently accept the Oracles and divination and
astrology ? Symbolism, allegory, and plastic ety-
mologies for the divine names, made ready helps
to this desired end — the stoical intelligence thus
devising the means and method of believing in
accordance with prevailing human needs. Such
arguments were applicable, when there was call,

INTERMEDIARIES 183

to Egypt's gods and Syria's, as well as those of
Greece.

The Syrian-born Greek, Poseidonius (cir. 135 to
cir. 51 B.C.), pupil of the Rhodian Panaetius, em-
bodied the change coming over Stoicism. After
his master's death, he left Rhodes, his adoptive
home, and travelled far, visiting Egypt, Nubia,
Spain, Gaul, and Italy. In all these countries, he
studied and investigated, and also saw his great
contemporaries, meeting Marius (!) in Rome, and
later having Cicero for an auditor at Rhodes. In
the universality of his knowledge he seemed a
child of Aristotle. None the less was he a child of
Plato, of the aged Plato so very absorbent of Py-
thagoreanism. He was a man of religious feeling
and catholic tolerance, even of catholic receptivity ;
and was much given to those direct and unreason-
ing modes of realising the divine, and thereby gain-
ing life, which are called mystic. For his philoso-
phy and working religion, he mustered the resources
of astronomy, geography, history, astrology, demon-
ology, divination, everything that might enlarge
the intellect and assure the mood of man. His
knowledge was broad, his reasoning loose, and his
constructive faculties were equal to the demands
of his ethical and religious enthusiasms. A great
and typical figure, he was the protagonist of the
spiritual revolution taking place throughout the
world of Hellenic thought, and was representative

184 DELIVERANCE

of the tendencies afterwards to culminate in Neo-
platonism.1

We have now to do with the oriental religions
which seem to project themselves into the Hellenic
and also the Latin world. They represent ways of
thinking and feeling — religious adjustments — ac-
cepted in Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, lands tinged
with Hellenism. We have then to consider the
Hellenism penetrating the East, but whose home
was in the Greek cities and the Greek lands, a Hel-
lenism which had become as productive, or recep-
tive, of religions as it was of systems of philosophic
adjustment. All these adjustments, of oriental cult
and Greek orientalised philosophy, will be seen,
through a congeniality in need and mood and prin-
ciples, to prepare men's minds for the Christian
deliverance.

There had always been some exchange of blows,
and wares, and ideas between the Greeks and the
non-Hellenic Mediterranean civilisations. But, of
course, with the opportunities and exigencies arising
through Alexander's conquest, Hellenic energy cast
itself with a new power upon Asia Minor and Persia
and Syria and Egypt. Under Alexander's succes-
sors, and finally under the Romans, political and
social conditions never ceased to further an inter-

1 On Poseidonius, see Christ-Schmid, Ges. der Griech. Lit., 5th
Ed. II, pp. 268 sqq., and compare P. Wendland, Hellenistisch-
Romisch Kultur, 2d Ed., pp. 134 sqq.

INTERMEDIARIES 185

change of ideas, and expose Greek and Syrian and
Egyptian to the influence of each other's moods and
thoughts. Lest one should be surprised at the
effect of the East upon Hellenism, and then upon the
Roman West, one should remember that, at least
in Roman times, Syria and Egypt surpassed Greece
and Italy in fertility and wealth and civilization.

Whatever came from the East was in answer to
the cravings or susceptibilities of the West — of
the Greek and Roman world. In the third and
second centuries before Christ, there was still a vast
amount of science and erudition at Alexandria and
other centres of Hellenic culture. And, in Italy,
Rome was at the height of her republican energy.
Nevertheless, under the strain of the last dragging
years of the second Punic war, the Senate (B.C. 205)
decreed the honoured reception of Cybele, the
Phrygian Great Mother, — which was as if a dour
Presbyterian synod in our own time should make a
place for Mother Eddy and her Christian Science in
the Westminster catechism. Likewise from the
close of the second century, the wide-spread and so
largely expatriated Hellenic peoples were yielding
to the religious impulse which was supplanting their
self-reliance. A widely pertinent illustration may
be given of this change of mood. As the satisfying
power of reason weakened, the goddess Tyche 1 —
Chance, blind Fortune — threatened the supremacy

1 Cf. Rohde, Der griechische Roman, pp. 276-282.

1 86 DELIVERANCE

of the divine universal law in the world's affairs.
She was not reasonable; nor could the rational
human will find satisfaction in acquiescing in blind
happenings toward which an attitude of voluntary
obedience was absurd. And this Tyche-Fortune was
worse than blind; she seemed malignant. At all
events, with the extension of this wilful Power, the
conception of Evil developed as an independent
principle hostile to the Good — a conception foreign
to classical Greek thought.

Inasmuch as the human will could not render
obedience either to Tyche or to the principle of
Evil, men were spurred to seek protection against
these irresponsible or malignant foes to human
peace : and so, reason having failed them, they
turned to religion with a new appeal, and sought to
link it with such philosophy as they still might
cherish. Greek religion, whatever else it was, had
always been a means of adjustment, a medium of
aid between humanity and the divine. This chief
function of religion entered and formed a strain in
Greek philosophy, passing betimes from the Orphic
mysteries to the system of Pythagoras, and then on
into the thought or mood of Plato. It became
negation in Epicureanism, since in that system man
needed only to assure himself of the indifference of
the gods. In Stoicism it was positive, earnest,
austere. Even the Scepticism of the later Academy
cast sheep's eyes on it.

INTERMEDIARIES 1 87

Outside of such self-respecting and unorientalised
systems, the endeavour of the man, thinker or
votary, to adjust himself with the divine and gain
its support was more unrestrained. It was driven
by the desire for unendangered happiness, the
yearning for salvation. But as the Roman religion,
in the strain of the Punic wars, had failed to satisfy,
so generally Hellenic men and women were looking
for fuller satisfaction and more responsive aid than
their ancestral worship afforded. The oriental
cults gave the emotional satisfaction so widely
craved. They appealed to the senses and the
sentiments, and offered their elaborate symbolism
to beguile the minds of the intelligent. They might
demand strenuous purification of their votaries, for
which they prescribed the method. They also
brought the promise of immortality. Wherever
accepted, at first casually or by a few, they worked
upon the tempers of their votaries, and their dif-
fusion was facilitated through this inclining of men's
minds. So the gods and goddesses, and their cults,
seemed to gain in power and vogue within the
Eastern lands, where they drew adherents from
among the Greek strains of population, as at Antioch
or Alexandria. Then they advanced beyond those
borders to invade the Greek and Latin West. From
Phrygia came the Great Mother, Cybele of many
forms and names ; Attis with her, and his orgiastic
rites of mutilation, death, and resurrection; then

1 88 DELIVERANCE

from Egypt, Isis, Osiris, Serapis; then many gods
from Syria, tending to transmute themselves to
solar manifestations of universal godhead; lastly
and most potently out of Persia, Mithra the mili-
tant, to be recognized by Diocletian as protector
of the Empire 1 ; and behind or through them all,
astrology and magic, veritable faiths that alluringly
taught a divine astral fatalism with ways of pro-
pitiating its decrees.

The acceptance of these cults by Greeks and
Romans was not a matter of haphazard chance,
although the motley religious aspect of the later
pagan Empire might lead one to think so. It was
affected by their suitability. For example, the
Greeks of Alexandria, and other Greeks or Romans
following suit, adopted only those Egyptian cults
(of the Osirian circle) which had become half-
Hellenised through Greek influence; they were
syncretistic, exceptionally plastic, and adaptable to
the thoughts and moods of tjieir new votaries. On
the other hand, Mithraism, half-Persian in origin,
and inspired by a strenuous dualism, never touched
the Greeks. Essentially a soldier's faith, and
adapted to militant imperial needs, it passed directly
to the Latin world, which it subdued with power.
All these faiths were offered to their Greek and

1 See generally, Cumont, Les Religions orientals* dans le Pagan-
isme romain (1905). There is an English translation and a
second edition.

INTERMEDIARIES 1 89

Latin converts under the guise of '' mysteries'3
accessible only to the duly instructed and initiated,
a mode of religious propagation familiar to Greeks
and Romans. Their object was union with the god,
attained by the priest in ecstasy, and revealed to
the votaries. These "mysteries" were secret, as the
name implies; they brought intuition, vision, even
fruition of the divine. In the initiated, there took
place an ecstatic passing away of self, and a rebirth
through which the virtues of the god were acquired
— his spirit, his power, his immortality. But
Osiris, Attis, or Adonis, with whom the devotee was
united, had been men, had suffered death, and had
risen as gods. Through their mysteries, what they
had undergone is not merely learned or seen by the
votary, but is veritably experienced and made his
own ; he is reborn and metamorphosed into the god.
So these religions provided scope for religious
passion, and suggested measureless means, both
ascetic and voluptuous, for satisfying it. They
were direct and personal in their power of assur-
ance, requiring no intervention of state function-
aries or promptings of state interests, of which they
might indeed be careless. They tended to regroup
society according to religious affinities and ties;
no more Greeks or Romans, bond or free, but all
equal in the mysteries of the Great Mother, of
Serapis or Isis. They also brought sure means of
purification, and promised a happy immortality.

190 DELIVERANCE

So they worked a change in Greek, and more
markedly (because of its deeply contrasting qualities)
in Latin paganism, took the backbone from the
latter, broke its rigidity of temper, rendered it
fluid, yielding, open to any suggestion or assurance
of that salvation which men were craving. And in
this religious flux, with its loose assimilation of god
and god, goddess and goddess, and their manifes-
tations concrete or symbolical, the more lofty-
minded votary could readily think of one god su-
preme and universal, operative or manifested in
many divine forms; he could also purify his faith,
and form a synthesis of moral precept agreeing with
his gifts. Thus he might harmonise the assurance
gained from religion with the adjustment of his
moral reason.

From the oriental religions, we turn to certain feat-
ures of that paganism into which they were passing
and were to some extent transforming. It was a
Greco-Roman paganism ; primarily, of course, Greek
in thought, with deflections combined with moral
stiffening due to the Roman temperament. Indeed,
for our present purpose, the tale begins with those
temperamental modifications of Hellenic philosophies,
which were worked out by Hellenically educated
Romans who retained the strength of their Roman
natures. It leads on through later phases of a pagan-
ism wherein Roman qualities are scarcely distinguish-
able in the Hellenic-oriental blend, out of which will

INTERMEDIARIES 191

then be seen to issue that last great pagan philo-
sophic-religious adjustment of man to the god within
him and without, which we call Neoplatonism.

Let us notice certain Roman very personal re-
adjustments of Hellenic attitudes toward life.
Looking to the days of the Republic, we are im-
pressed by the almost portentous figure of Lucretius,
— a great talent, an austere and powerful tempera-
ment. Who does not at least know of his poem
De natura rerum, in which he invoked Lady Venus
and hailed pleasure as Life's Leader — " Dux vitae
dia voluptas." But the poem was written to release
himself and other mortals from the anxieties and
ills that men had made for themselves out of
their vain fear of the gods. Relief from fear, reliance
on reason, and acquiescence in the knowledge of
the nature of things, which reason had won, made
the adjustment of this man, whose hatred of
religion, uniting with Roman austerity, chose to
reset the Stoic temper and ethical ideal in the
Epicurean scheme of physics and theology.

As of course, in the great days of the Republic,
the individual Roman citizen, somewhat inarticu-
lately and unconsciously, had merged himself in the
fortunes of his country. Largely speaking, that was
his devotion, and that was his adjustment; his for-
tunes stood with hers; and he felt his own life
carried on in the lives of his children, themselves
again making part of the all-enveloping respublica.

192 DELIVERANCE

Both he and the Republic were scrupulous in their
religious observances, that they might not err and
lose the favour of the gods. In all of this, we may
think the Romans self-taught, instructed by their
temper and their exigencies ; yet any part of this
Roman adjustment might have been learned from
Sparta, or from the great days of Athens.

Likewise one sees that the ideal Vergilian adjust-
ment is the Augustan or imperial. The great
pagan heart of the supreme Roman poet knew the
sorrow entailed by endeavour, and felt the pathos
of mortal lives. This depth of feeling, this realisa-
tion of the sacrifice required, gives truth and power
to the lesson of the ^Eneid, which teaches fulfilment
of duty, yea, of destiny, and in obedience to God.
The energy of a great epoch was needed to attain
this imperial adjustment, valid for the Empire, and
perhaps ideally valid for its citizens if only they
would be staunch. In fact, it was real and satis-
fying for but few — perhaps it was too politically
inspired. An adjustment^ coming closer to the
individual was needed even by noble natures.

Such a one was Horace, in whose urbanity were
mingled the finest flavours of Epicureanism and
Stoicism. Kindness, knowledge of men, tolerance
of human faults, fondness for pleasure, consciousness
of its insufficiency, self-control within his limita-
tions, all contributed to the well-being of this ad-
mirably trimmed and balanced nature. He leaned

INTERMEDIARIES 193

toward Epicureanism while life's pleasures ran in
their early grooves ; but the thoughtfulness of years
and the pathos of mortality drew him — inter-
mittently perhaps — toward a more stable satis-
faction. He began to praise virtue, the sterling
Vergilian virtues of old Rome. The thought of
them gave him strength. And while he still felt
that the contented mind, the aequum animum, must
rest upon itself, he looked more constantly to God
to support and enrich his life — for which he would
be grateful :

Tu quamcumque deus tibi fortunaverit horam
Grata sume manu, neu dulcia differ in annum.

Perhaps he thought it best to seize the sunny
day — carpe diem ! — even within the providence of
God!

Three men lived under the Empire, belonging to
three generations, in whom Stoicism is clothed and
decent, not given to religious orgies, and yet is
moving with the tendencies of the time toward the
expression of a religious ethics corresponding at
many points with the ethics of patristic Christianity.
Their adjustment with life still rested in reason and
the resolutely accordant will; and yet their still
rational adjustment was becoming prayerful, seek-
ing some assurance from God. No need to say that
these men were Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus
Aurelius.

194 DELIVERANCE

The finished Stoical aphorisms of the first do not
inspire complete confidence. One doubts whether
the frail disposition of man could live up to any-
thing so perfect. A mind despising the accidents
of fortune, and happy in virtue, is the summum
bonum, and constitutes the human adjustment with
Seneca. Accordingly, no evil can come to a good
man; misfortune is his opportunity, — and many
more like cheering utterances. Yet Seneca made
the conventional Stoical concessions to the weakness
of human nature — one prefers to have joys to
moderate, rather than griefs to repress. The sage
is not a stone : how could virtue be virtue unless
it felt its trials. He also recognised social duties,
which had long been part of virtue. And he was
religious : in regno nati sumus ; deo parere libertas
est, — Obedience to God, that is our liberty.
Seneca's god is the perfect and stern Stoic sage,
having no weaknesses, and recognising none ! There
is friendship, as there is likeness, between God and
good men, for whom he reserves his disciplinary
benevolence, while he lets the wicked wanton in
their lusts. He tries the good man with adversity,
and delights to watch the struggle. Neither God,
nor the Stoic sage, sorrows over human misfortune ;
but views all life through the eyes of the Stoic
reason.

Epictetus was not so rich as Seneca, and his life
rings truer to his principles. He thinks more con-

INTERMEDIARIES 195

stantly of God ; philosophy has become religion
with him. He can be thankful to God not only for
the vine and wheat, but for the virtuous mind,
which is indeed a part of God, who has set the law
that man's good shall lie in his rational will, in-
vincible from without, even by God. But let man
reflect always on God and the divine providence in
the world ; let him attempt nothing without God.
The true philosopher will "know that he is sent a
messenger from Zeus to men about good and bad
things, to show them that they have wandered and
are seeking the substance of good and evil where it
is not." 1

Born a slave and made a freedman, Epictetus was
a contented man, his happiness established in his
reason and his will, and warmed with entire trust in
God. But Marcus was a different kind of pagan
saint. He was burdened with the rule of an Empire,
a thankless, hopeless task filling him with intellectual
melancholy. His philosophy, his religion, was essen-
tially the same as that of Epictetus. His palace
was to him as the freedman's cottage ; for he needed
as few things as Epictetus. Indeed he might have
been happier in a lowly station, which would have
left him untried and undisciplined by such harassing
responsibilities. Marcus is disposed to pray to the
gods even for things within his own power, for
freedom from anxiety and fear and grief, as well as
1 Dis. Ill, 22. Long's translation.

196 DELIVERANCE

from vain desires. Though strong in his reason and
Stoic virtue, he felt the need of aid.

"Follow God and love mankind," says Marcus, for
love of one's neighbour is a property of the rational
soul, conscious of its affinity to other souls and God.
Satisfaction lies in always acting thus — obediently
and in accordance with right reason. All is prepared
from eternity — the thread of thy being, along
with other things ! The Universe loves whatever
is to be ; and as it loves, so love I. Yet in Marcus
this philosophic satisfaction might become mere
resignation. He was a little weary of the universe
he loved. He feared his imagination, was distrustful
of his heart, or at least felt the need to steel it
through meditation on mortality as an incident in
the universal necessity of dissolution. If his soul
was not embittered, still the whole whirl and flux
of life seemed but a pointless warfare, from which,
when released, he would depart satisfied.

Stoicism is tired in Marcus; it no longer cheers.
It has depressed the human heart; it has shut its
eyes too resolutely against feelings which it could not
entertain, against hopes which it could not justify.
Stoicism could not really approve of love, which is
longing and anxiety and rapture, and not unmoved
benevolence. In fine, the Stoic God could not love,
the Stoic physics admitted no immortality. The
age demanded both, and Stoicism became a dis-
carded creed.

INTERMEDIARIES 197

The treatises of Seneca and the Discourses of
Epictetus survive as illustrious examples of the
philosophic propaganda and ethical exhortation
current in the first and second centuries of what was
scarcely yet the Christian era. Many austere
figures moved through the Empire, endeavouring
to recall men from their folly to a truer realisation
of their nature, and instructing them how they might
be saved from the evil of the world. This preaching
drew from the moral stores of die Hellenistic philos-
ophies, which were becoming religious faiths. It
sought to cast men on their inner selves, upon their
spiritual lives, and point out how their true and
enduring natures might be rescued and saved. It
taught higher thoughts of God, and the yielding
oneself to the divine will as the truest sacrifice.
In life as well as doctrine, these men had much in
common with the life and message of those who were
preaching Christianity. Yet the fullest approxima-
tion to contemporary Christianity, and the most
efficient influence upon human moods making for
its acceptance, was that final Hellenistic system of
philosophy and religion, called Neoplatonism,
which also offered men the adjustment, or perhaps
deliverance, nearest to the salvation offered by the
Christian faith.

There were apparently abysms of difference be-
tween Stoicism and Neoplatonism. Yet the philo-
sophic and pietistic eclecticism of the latter had its

198 DELIVERANCE

antecedent in the eclectically expanded Stoicism of
Poseidonius; though, to be sure, the system of
which he was the nominal adherent seems again to
contract its phylacteries in Seneca and Marcus.
That may be referred, however, to their personal
tempers, rather than to any tendency of their time.

Neoplatonism was the creature of mood and
metaphysics. It united metaphysics and ethics
with religious ecstasy. Plotinus, who died in the
year 270 A.D., was its constructor. He was a meta-
physical genius and also a man so austere in spirit
that it cost him little effort to ignore the body's
needs. He drew upon the previous great systems of
Greek thought, — upon Aristotle, upon Stoicism,
above all upon Plato. But while he was a master-
builder with their reasonings, he had no aptitude
for physical science. Hence his philosophy royally
neglected the accumulated scientific knowledge of
the past, and thus fell in with the tendencies of its
time. In part, Plotinus's system was a last result of
Plato's idealism. But with this metaphysical Egyp-
tian, far more fatuously than with the great Athenian
master of knowledge as well as dialectic, the aspira-
tions of the soul became the criterion, and the sum,
of human knowledge.

To attain its ends, Neoplatonism made use of
means which would have been abominations to the
purer Greek philosophies. It wantoned in allegory,
and in that way explained and justified any foolish-

INTERMEDIARIES 199

ness to which its followers felt drawn. From the
beginning it was touched with the Orient ; and then
quickly embraced those motley cults and super-
stitions in which the Orient had the greater part.
Even Plotinus was driven by a yearning to be saved
from the confusion of mortal life. His aim was
neither knowledge nor the satisfaction springing
from the ultimate consideration of facts and values,
which is philosophy. His mind was filled with the
desire of ecstatic spiritual well-being, which his
reason could neither attain nor justify. The goal he
looked to was supra-rational ecstatic union with the
Absolute One.

To be sure, this goal was led up to through the
discipline of ethics and long lines of metaphysical
prolegomena, — with Plotinus. His disciple Por-
phyry still liked to reason, and had that faculty;
but his temper was distraught, and religious anxious-
ness drove him to questionable spiritual drugs.
He was incredulous as to demons — how can they
harm a pure soul ? But his imagination, like the
age he lived in, swarmed with them. He talks of
them continually, as did Tertullian, and the great
Origen, and that doughty pagan, Celsus, against
whom Origen wrote. The age was obsessed with
demons. It were best to take them without qualms
and cheerfully, as Plutarch had done, and as lambli-
cus, the Neoplatonic hierophant who followed
Porphyry, was to do. With him Neoplatonism

200 DELIVERANCE

casts off" restraint, flings wide its arms to every
superstition, and endeavours on principle to
justify belief in the incredible and reliance upon
the absurd — upon theurgy with all its magic words
and acts. Thenceforth it kept open house for all
phases of popular paganism. Yet its more intellec-
tual adherents might still attach themselves to its
metaphysics, its system of emanation of life and
being from the One to the Nous, and from the
Nous to the World-soul and the souls of men.

In its strenuous and more consistent phases, Neo-
platonism was ascetic. For, pushing on along the
dualistic currents of the time, it had come to dis-
credit matter for its lack of metaphysical reality,
and hate it for its defilements of the flesh-entangled
soul, the lures with which it stopped the soul's
progress toward ecstatic union with the All-spirit,
the All-real, the All-One.

Obviously, even with its metaphysical inceptor,
Neoplatonism, rising above human reason, yearning
for salvation from material unrealities, looking
toward union with the Ineffable, demanded the
immediate support of that toward which the soul
was reaching as t;he goal of bliss, and which by itself
the soul could not attain. The Divine draws on
the ardent philosopher by its own perfect Being:
it awaits the upward striving soul. But how when
the soul is blind and feeble ? Will not the Divine
in some way meet the soul, reveal Itself, and hold

INTERMEDIARIES 2OI

out aid ? Can It not be induced to aid ? Are there
not mediatorial means ? The soul of Plotinus was
strong with spiritual impulse; the souls of others
after him required stimulus and aid and guidance.
They called for a lowering of the mediatorial means,
and looked for plain and palpable modes of revela-
tion. Neoplatonism became whatever its votaries
required. It took what they wished from Egypt,
accepted the Sun and planetary worship from Syria;
it filled itself out with divination and astrology.
Accepting the ritual and method of the Eastern
mysteries, it developed means of mediation, educated
a priesthood skilled in magic, able to win the god's
aid and reveal his will ; able likewise to defend the
votary from the myriad demons which beset men
everywhere, benumbing, frightening, or distracting
the worshipper, even thronging the temples, and
requiring dispersal before the true god can appear.
Neoplatonism represents the last and most in-
clusive blending of Hellenic-oriental elements in a
final paganism, a final pagan religion, having its
reason and unreason, its decencies and indecencies,
suited to the motley multitude of its votaries.

From our point of view it was the last Hellenic
adjustment — an adjustment quickly overflowing
reason, seeking assurance and salvation from with-
out, becoming a religion. Plotinus, incredulous of
matter, pressed toward ecstasy and union with the
One, through his own reason and his own spiritual

202 DELIVERANCE

energy. That was his adjustment, — an adjustment
needing little assurance beyond the power of its
impulse. But Porphyry, his disciple, already fearful,
is all too conscious of the waverings of his soul, its
hankerings after all manner of indecorous enchant-
ments which his reason could not quite effectively
contemn. For his adjustment, he needed magic
nostrums as well as the deeper assurances of faith.
And after Porphyry, though some men might have
rational thoughts, none drew back from whatever
spiritual comfort might be suggested by fancy or
current superstition. For ten that yearned for
union with the One, thousands sought the stay and
strength, the protection, power, even the immortal
nature, of whatever god into whose " mysteries'3
they were initiated.

Contemporaries, though tjiey may disavow and
anathematise each other, have nearly everything
in common except perhaps the specific points on
which they think they differ. Gnostics, Neo-
platonists, Manichaeans, Arians, Catholic Christians
of the third and fourth centuries, had indefinitely
more in common than we can have with any of
them, whatever be our sympathies. Yet on the
other hand, tjie fuller our knowledge becomes of
the manifold likenesses between Christianity 'and all
tjie other religions swarming in those centuries, the
more surely we are driven to the recognition of
dynamic qualities in Catholic Christianity by which

INTERMEDIARIES 203

it emerged victorious from the maze of contem-
porary systems, even though it never freed itself
from the current views and superstitions of the age
which accepted and partly fashioned it.

One may safely emphasise the likenesses between
Neoplatonism and Christianity, in practical mo-
rality, in occasional asceticism, in religious anxious-
ness (especially concerning the besetting hosts of
devils), in the conscious need of saving mediation,
and generally in credulity and receptive mood. The
spiritual needs of Neoplatonists and Christians were
similar, though the two religions had very different
means of satisfying them.

One may say much the same of tjie Gnostic
systems, a group of religious phenomena taking
their rise before the Christian era, but afterwards
acquiring more striking features and enormous
vogue. Gnosticism carried a mixture of oriental
and Hellenic elements, and tended to become a
sort of bastard Christianity. It was by no means
unrelated to Neoplatonism, since it strove to intuit
and behold its god, and so unite with him and gain
his strength; it even sought to effect such union
through veritable experience of the divine, the
supernatural or supermaterial. The Gnostic union
with the Divine might take place in passionate
sense modes. Gnosticism was also dualistic, finding
everywhere the action of good and evil. Indeed its
various systems seem almost to arise out of this

204 DELIVERANCE

problem of the origin of evil. Of course, the Gnostic
religions were full of demons, and erudite with spells
to drive them from the soul journeying on to its
salvation. Salvation was its aim ; and that drew it
to Christianity. But the Gnostic salvation had
been a weird and mystic process entwined with man's
origin, rather than conceived as springing from a
definite historical event. Gnosticism would adopt
the Christian Saviour: but diverse and grotesque
were the struggles of its sects to make the Saviour
into an element of their belief; for no Gnostic sect
could accept him in the reality of his manhood, or
admit that the Saviour died upon the cross.

The struggle of Gnosticism to become Christian, or
to make Christianity Gnostic, was the supreme peril
of early Christianity wherein it was in danger of be-
coming a hybrid. But it gained strength from its
resistance, and greater definitude of creed ; thereby, at
the same time, proving itself a living thing, an or-
ganic faith, that could not blend with another system.

So Catholic Christianity became itself more clearly
through this miraculous process of pulling itself out
of the swirl which surrounded and almost seemed to
have cradled it. In this it clung to its adjustment, of
Christ, and in Christ and the Church; and this
clinging to its adjustment, its assurance, its salvation,
was at the same time, necessarily, a rejection of the
similar or dissimilar adjustments, the insufficient
assurances and revelations, the vague mediatorial

INTERMEDIARIES 205

means, and the unreal, the fantastic, the unhuman
and undivine salvations, which were not its own.

Arianism and Manichaeism were the last two
systems, so like and yet so fatally unlike Catholic
Christianity, which it had to disclaim, or from
which it had to free itself. The former was a Chris-
tian heresy, filled in its time with the possibilities
of all kinds of dogmatic idolatry — not merely the
harmless genial worship of the saints, which Catholic
Christianity held to. If Gnosticism had impugned
the reality of Christ's manhood, Arianism impugned
the reality of his godhead. But Catholic Chris-
tianity was to cling to this dual reality as the suffi-
cient mediatorial means of salvation.

More from without, and yet with many dangerous
likenesses, was Manichaeism, — from which our
final example of deliverance, Augustine, will be
seen to drag himself with pain. It was a drastic
dualism, sprung mainly from Persian Magianism,
but absorbing also Christian matter, and making
a particularly malignant and pessimistic blend. Nor
was this tare ever rooted out ; for as the rankest of
heresies it clung to the skirts of Christianity through
the Middle Ages.

Fingit sibi quisque colendum, mens vaga quod suadet.1

Setting these words of some Latin poet as the
epitaph of these oriental pagan systems, we shall

1 From Rohde, Griechischer Roman, 2d Ed., p. 19.

2o6 DELIVERANCE

now turn to Christianity, whose man-god was not
fashioned by the rambling mind. In that there was
not only reality, but reality manifold if not inconsist-
ent ! Whatever appears real in the others, is some-
how absorbed in Catholic Christianity, and raised
to a higher power, — morals, asceticism, needs,
and the means of their satisfaction. It was even a
yoking of opposites, blind faith and rational en-
lightenment, obedience and disobedience, all accord-
ing to the spirit. A mighty exercise of mind begins
within the Church, in which these opposites work
together for the building up of the Christian man,
and the making firm of the Christian adjustment,
the Christian assurance, the Christian salvation.

CHAPTER IX
JESUS

' I VHE prudent mind halts before the mystery
•*• of Jesus Christ. It will hesitate to attempt
to characterise the adjustment with life and God
of one from whom proceeded modes of deliverance
for mankind. How shall one conceive of the personal
assurance of salvation in him who soon was to be held
the salvation of the world ? We have the records,
and with whatever differences of opinion we may
regard them, we should not deliver ourselves over
to the sweet conceit of selecting what seems probable,
and rejecting what does not. If we suspect the
records, or reject them, what other means of informa-
tion have we touching this being, human or divine,
or both, as to whom we must hold some opinion,
seeing that he was at least the fountain-head of
our religion ? Recent scholarship has gathered
and arranged the multifarious array of contempo-
rary resemblances to nearly everything in primitive
Christianity, and has set forth the moulding and
remoulding influences into which the Gospel of
Christ was cast. Nearly every element, even in
that first Gospel core, seems to have had its alien

counterpart. But even then these alien counter-

207

208 DELIVERANCE

parts were jaded phantasms; while the Gospel was
a thing of human and divine reality. Its life made
its originality. He who would search into the vital
truth of it needs all his scholarship, and yet must
not spend himself on husks, or be satisfied with
analogies between what is dead and what is living,
between the vagaries of the tired imagination, and
principles rooted in human, if not divine, verity.

In the main, we must keep to the records, proceed-
ing exegetically, and not building too much from
our own modern minds, or our conceptions of what
must have been. We can scarcely expect to see
into the inscrutable adjustment of Jesus, which
rested in his nature and his relationship to God.
In the oneness of this adjustment, there is duality.
For we shall find no adjustment in the man Jesus,
unless we treat him as the Messiah and the Son of
God — as he deemed himself. His adjustment can-
not be treated as that of a simple man, for in the rec-
ords he is more than man. It is inseverable from
his more than human function as the Saviour of
men : it forms part of the Gospel, part of the King-
dom of God, which is the salvation of mankind.

One will also recognise the originality of Jesus,
both in his adjustment and in his Gospel to men.
He had antecedents, and he moved in an environ-
ment from which he drew his fund of incidental
knowledge or ignorance as to man and the visible,
even the invisible, world. Let us take a striking

JESUS 209

example : the men of Jesus' time, and those of the
following centuries, were surrounded by demons;
all life was enveloped with them. The minds
even of the best, Plutarch, Celsus as well as Origen,
all the Church Fathers, are infested with them,
and are disposed to gauge the efficacy of a faith by
its power over demons, the demons of pollution,
the demons of madness, the demons of disease.
Jesus also, just as he preaches and heals the sick, so
with equal potency he casts out demons; he gives
his apostles authority to preach and cast out demons :
Kr)pwT(Tf.iv and €K/3dXX€iv TO. &U/AOJ/UX go together from
the beginning of his ministry. Thus exorcism
pervades the Gospel, and will pervade the whole
Church through the following centuries. Yet does
it really penetrate to the life of Christ and the Gospel
of Christ ? At all events not in any explanatory
manner: for it is incidental and detachable, and
though it was certainly part of the working Gospel
for many years, we know that Christ and his Gospel
were not the fruit of these opinions of the time.
Consideration of such environing or antecedent
beliefs gives but a partial and superficial view of
him. Not by these ways shall we penetrate the
nature of Christ, and enter the sphere of his moving
convictions, which constituted his adjustment, his
relationship with God.

Now, following our records, and perhaps distrust-
ful both of ourselves and them, let us see at all

210 DELIVERANCE

events how we may understand the adjustment
wherein Jesus kept his life at one, with peace of
mind, and spirit free to do its perfect work. God
was his father. Strength, confidence, peace, life,
in fine, came from him, and on the Son's part was
energised by the single motive of doing the Father's
will. The power and compass of this motive was
the will of God, his Father, as Jesus realised it within
himself and brought the inner realisation to outer
actuality in word and act. His dependence was
entire ; his faith included the perfect faith of a man.
His conduct represented the perfect righteousness of
man, fulfilling, for example, those unified 'Beati-
tudes'3 of the '" Sermon on the Mount," as well as
all the precepts grouped within that '' Sermon's'3
amplitude. It fulfilled whatever Jesus demanded
of men.

But many sayings in the Gospels, which apply to
him and his relationship to God, and, as it were,
disclose features of his adjustment, do not apply
to men. One may pass from general precepts
binding upon all, to other statements which illumine
their significance, and yet relate directly to Christ
alone. 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy
mind — and thy neighbour as thyself :' : these two
commands, which Jesus more clearly than the ancient
writers knew to contain the purport and content
of the Law, he lived and dwelt in. "He who seeks

JESUS 211

to save his life, shall lose it, and he who loseth his
life for my sake shall save it" : here again Jesus
was the incarnate fulfilment of his own words to men.
We turn to other words of his which reflect illumi-
nation on the giving up of life for the Gospel's sake,
and on the love which men shall have for God, and
yet primarily set forth a relationship between the
Son and Father which is beyond human participa-
tion: "All things have been delivered unto me of
my Father: and no one knoweth the Son save the
Father ; neither doth any know the Father, save the
Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal
him." The next verses continue: "Come unto me
all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest. Take my yoke [i.e. my precepts]
upon you, and learn of me." Jesus points to himself
as the end and goal, just as he speaks of the Kingdom
of God as that wherein men reach the relationship
to God which is salvation. His love was the
Father's love, and his life did the Father's work of
love toward men. He demanded faith in himself,
in his Christhood, his power from God to save.
Consider the sequence of the verses in the eighth
chapter of Mark: :<If any man would come after
me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and
follow me. For whosoever would save his life
shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life for my
sake and the Gospel's shall save it. For what doth
it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and forfeit

212 DELIVERANCE

his life ? For what should a man give in exchange
for his life ? For whosoever shall be ashamed of
me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful
generation, the Son of man also shall be ashamed of
him, when he cometh in the glory of his Father
with the holy angels. And he said unto them,
Verily I say unto you, there be some here of them
that stand by, which shall in no wise taste of death,
till they see the Kingdom of God come with power." l
Thus Jesus discloses his conception of himself.
It was at one with his conviction of his mission to men
and his relationship to God. 'Verily the Son of man
came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and
to give his life a ransom for many." Often, and under
varied circumstances, Jesus tells his disciples that
he shall be put to death and, on the third day,
rise again. There is no statement coming from him
so frequently repeated in the Gospels. It seems
to represent the core of his assurance of his mission,
and the bleeding heart of his faith in God his Father,
— who should bring him to his death and also raise
him up on the third day. The power of his faith
sees even further — and shall we consider this also
a feature of his personal adjustment or assurance ?
The Son of man shall come in great power and
glory, to judge the world, and send the angels to
gather his elect. It may be that Jesus drew the
form of his convictions as to his final coming from
1 Cf. Matt. xvi. 24-28 ; xxv. 3 1-46.

JESUS 213

Messianic expectations current with his race, even as
he accepted prevalent beliefs as to demoniac posses-
sion. But, again, the borrowed form, so far as it
was borrowed, casts but a surface gleam upon the
moving energies of his faith.

Such seems to me the nature of Jesus' adjustment
of himself with God. Amplifications will suggest
themselves — indeed they fill the Gospels, or con-
stitute the Gospel. And so far we have kept to the
Synoptics as the more generally accepted record.
The Fourth Gospel seems to issue from a stage of
further reflection upon the earthly life and death
of Jesus, and upon the eternal power and love and
life of Christ. Thoughts to be held to, thoughts
to be rejected, had pressed upon the writer, arising
or suggested (some of them, perhaps, by Paul
or his Epistles) since the time when Jesus walked on
earth. But their effect upon the uplifted mind of
this evangelist does not impair the value of his under-
standing of Christ. I do not see why our historical
consciousness should be shocked at taking his Gospel
as spiritually complementary to the Synoptics, and
as throwing the light of completion upon such con-
ceptions of Jesus' personal adjustment as they give.
This further and completing adjustment is of the
divine love, which is life and gives life.

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten son, that everyone believing on him
should not perish, but have eternal iife.)J

214 DELIVERANCE

"The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all
things into his hand. He that believeth on the
Son, hath eternal life" (iii. 16, 35, 36).

"Even as the Father hath loved me, I also have
loved you; abide ye in my love. If ye keep my
commandments, ye shall abide in my love ; even as
I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide
in his love. These things have I spoken unto you,
that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may
be fulfilled."

'This is my commandment that ye love one
another, as I have loved you. Greater love hat,h
no man than this, that a man give up his life for
his friends' (xv. 9-12, 13).

In these passages, a number of cognate thoughts
tend to unite, to become in and of each other:
God's love for his Son and for the world ; the Son
abiding in the Father's love, and sharing in the
Father's love of man; men doing the divine will,
abiding in the divine love, and loving one another.
With the result that they shall be saved and have
eternal life, which is theirs who abide in the love of
God, — the love which wills eternal life and makes to
live. The end is the union of believers, the union of
obedient lovers, in Christ and God. It is evident
that the Son's adjustment with the Father embraces
the salvation of mankind, is even identical with it.

This will appear more clearly if we turn back
and follow the Gospel for a little. "God is spirit,"

JESUS 215

Jesus has said to the Samaritan woman; and when
his disciples have returned to the well, and ask him
to eat, he answers that he has meat they know not
of, which is to do the will of him who sent him.
After the healing at the Bethesda pool, he says to
the Jews, "He that heareth my word, and believeth
him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not
into judgement, but hath passed out of death into
life. . . . For as the Father hath life in himself,
even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself.
... I can do nothing of myself." And at another
time : ' I am come down from heaven, not to do
mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.
And this is the will of him that sent me, that of all
that which he hath given me, I should lose nothing,
but should raise it up at the last day."

Here it is clear, that as Christ's adjustment
is to do his Father's will, which is that no believing
life shall be lost, so that adjustment must include
the imparting of eternal life to all believers. The
absolute life-giving power of spirit is next declared.
'I am the bread of life," — a hard saying to the
Jews. In the explanation to the disciples, Jesus
says : 'It is the spirit that maketh life" : TO Trvev/xa
eo-Ttv TO £a>o7roiow. Even as it is the truth that maketh
free, free from the bondage to sin, wherein there
cannot be the eternal freedom of the spirit.

. . . and I lay down my life for the sheep.
. . . My sheep hear my voice . . . and I give

21 6 DELIVERANCE

them eternal life; and they shall never perish, and
no one shall snatch them out of my hand. My
Father, which hath given them unto me, is greater
than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of
the Father's hand. I and the Father are one."

The final discourses with the disciples contain the
fullest expression of the adjustment of the Son with
and in the Father; they also set forth the ultimate
phases of that love and life which Christ is, in and of
the Father, and which those receive who love him,
and thereby become one with him and the Father.
They include the fourteenth chapter of John, and
then the fifteenth with its image of the true Vine,
also the sixteenth, a chapter of love's consolations,
— "that in me ye may have peace" ; and finally the
seventeenth, where analysis may well hesitate.

"Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son that
the Son may glorify thee : even as thou hast given
him authority over all flesh, that whatsoever thou
hast given him, to them he should give eternal life.
And this is life eternal, that they should know thee,
the only true God, and him whom thou didst send,
even Jesus Christ. I glorified thee on the earth,
having accomplished the work which thou hast given
me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me
with thine own self with the glory which I had with
thee before the world was."

Thereupon the prayer turns directly to the
disciples and those who are to believe through their

JESUS 217

word : '{ Sanctify them in the truth ; thy word is
truth . . . that they may all be one ; even as thou,
Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may
be in us : that the world may believe that thou didst
send me. And the glory which thou hast given me
I have given unto them; that they may be one,
even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me,
that they may be perfected into one . . . that the
love wherewith thou lovedst me may be in them,
and I in them."

So far as the mystery of Christ may be unveiled,
these words declare that the adjustment, the assur-
ance, the salvation, which was his and in his life,
consummates itself in the life of God and in the
salvation of men, through the divine love and the
imparting of life through love's sanctifying truth.

CHAPTER X
PAUL

TJAUL'S antecedents as a Jew and education as
-*• a Pharisee drastically shaped the creative
working of his religious genius, and set the ways
through which he reached that power of conviction
which was to move the Gentile world. The intellec-
tual necessities of this Jew and Pharisee, in conflict
and in alliance with his experience of Christ, moulded
the form of his adjustment, his devotion, and his
assurance of salvation. Some of his phrases, even
some of his conceptions, may have been taken from
the mystery-religions of the Hellenistic world he
moved in. When the phrases or the ideas of those
ubiquitous cults offered themselves as vehicles for
the expression, or means for the clarification, of his
thoughts of Christ and his new relationship to God
through Christ, he naturally used tjhem.

Leaving his birthplace, the Hellenistic city of
Tarsus, Paul went to Jerusalem as a youth, where he
diligently studied the law of Israel at the feet of
Gamaliel. That honoured Pharisee appears as the
most tolerant and patient-minded of his class. It
was he who stayed the first persecution of the

apostles, warning the Sanhedrin to beware, since

218

PAUL

219

perchance the teaching in the name of Jesus might be
of God (Acts v). Yet he was a learned master and
strict observer of the law ; and there was at least
one zealot in his school. That zealot,* somewhat
later, is found approving of the death of Stephen,
and then becomes an eager persecutor of the followers
of Jesus. Active at Jerusalem in committing them
to prison, he takes letters from the High Priest to
the Damascus synagogues, in order that he may hunt
them there.

Although Saul's persecution of the Church is
frequently referred to in the Acts and in his own
Epistles, we are not intimately informed as to its
motives, save that it sprang from zeal for the law :
"Ye have heard," he writes to the Galatians, "of
my manner of life in time past in the Jews' religion,
how that beyond measure I persecuted the Church of
God, and made havoc of it : and I advanced in the
Jews' religion beyond many of mine companions
among my countrymen, being more exceedingly
zealous for the traditions of my fathers."

So we cannot tell just what was working in the
mind of the young man Saul, while the garments of
those who were stoning Stephen were in keeping
at his feet; nor what was surging in him while on
the way to Damascus. Zealous for the law, was he
wilfully hurrying on, lest he find himself stopped by
the reluctance of misgivings and the dissuasion of
counter impulses ? Such matters, and the more

220 DELIVERANCE

definite stroke of illuminatioiTand repentance which
overcame him, each of us will interpret for himself:
the resources of modern psychology are at our dis-
posal. That "vision/* however, was to be an up-
lifting — not an overturning — of the contents of
Paul's education and convictions.

After he was led into the city, and his sight had
been restored by brother Ananias, or, as he puts it
in his own words, looking back after many years'
consideration: "when it was the good pleasure of
God, who separated me, even from my mother's
womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal
his Son in me, that I might preach him among the
Gentiles, straightway I did not take counsel with
flesh and blood . . . but I went away into Arabia9
(Gal. i). ;

We are ignorant of the nature and setting of this
retirement- Let us not imagine that we can think
as Paul; his very words, impressed with his ex-
perience and peculiar education, do not bear the
same meaning to us that they had for him. We
must not be too sure that we really understand the
argumentation of his Epistles; still less can we
penetrate the conflicts, or the reasonings within
himself, which we think he must have passed
through, before he attained to those convictions
and that power of faith which were to move the
Gentiles. But at least we must interpret this
journey into Arabia as a period of retirement and

PAUL 221

reflection. It is inconceivable that he did not need
a time of quiet to restore his mind, and enable him
to get new bearings on the old sea of his fathomless
education and inheritance, before he could steer a
course by the light flashing within him.

As to arguments and communings with himself,
before his great convictions came, we can only
work back to them very uncertainly, by inference.
And yet it seems as if we could trace, for instance,
in a writing of such personal intensity as the Epistle
to the Galatians, something of the process by which
those convictions had become a very part of Paul,
belonging to his mental and religious growth, as we
might say, or, as he would deem, springing from the
power of Christ within him.

But before making this approach to a view of the
scope and contents of the great deliverance which
Paul attained in Christ, its basis, as it were the body
which was to be transformed and clothed upon,
must be grasped. Paul was a Jew, and to the end
remained a Jew, faithful to the God of his fathers,
and faithful to the law of Israel as he conceived that
law to have been fulfilled in Christ. If Jesus said
that not one jot or tittle of the law should pass
away till all things were fulfilled, so Paul, following
the argumentation in which he had been trained,
and holding fast to the law's elemental or pedagogic
authority, rises above it through its own reasonings,
compels the old to support the new, and so fulfil

222 DELIVERANCE

itself in Christ. :< Do we then make the law of none
effect through faith ? Nay, we establish the law" —
even in the principle of justification through faith.
Is not this a large part of the burden of the Epistle to
the Romans ? A burden which is carried with
strainings of the spirit ! The bearer is driven for-
ward by the sense of his own inability to fulfil the
law, — a deep and dreadful sense of his radically
evil nature, which compels him to do the thing he
hates. This body of sin and death must literally
be dispossessed and replaced by the spirit of Christ,
which we have through faith and hope and love.

It is wonderful how legal are Paul's arguments,
and through what tortuous and narrow-necked pas-
sages he emerges into the breadth of the truth of
Christ. It is all there in Romans: the twistings
seem to end with the seventh chapter, and with
the opening of the eighth, Paul has cast off the
body of this death and freed himself from the con-
demnation of the law: 'There is therefore no
condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus . . .
and we know that to them that love God all things
work together for good. . . .*' And yet, perhaps
alas ! perhaps unavoidably, Paul must needs re-
trammel himself in arguments touching the right-
eousness of God's foreordainment as to the elect.
Because of such hamperings and hindrances, Paul,
with all his splendid breadth and truth of mind
and heart, perhaps seems to fail to dwell quite

PAUL 223

easily in the absolute universality of the Fatherhood
of God and the spirit of Christ, life-giving, re-
creating. Yet with fervent power he makes even
that his own, through revelation and the grace of
God.

It will now be illuminating to follow the argument
of the Epistle to the Galatians. The fervour of
his exhortations to those people, well-meaning, and
yet foolish and bewitched, harks back to disputa-
tions with himself, in the years when he had need
to press his way through each successive difficulty
springing out of his education — thorns for his feet!
We feel the admonition of the superscription :
* Paul an apostle, not from men / . . . grace to you
and peace from God the Father, and our Lord
Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that
he might deliver us out of this present evil world."
The admonition becomes explicit in the next sen-
tences. Then he recalls how he had made known to
them that the Gospel which he preached came to him
through revelation of Jesus Christ, not from the
instruction of James, Cephas, or John, who, never-
theless, in good time gave him the right hand of
fellowship, as having been intrusted with the Gospel
for the Gentiles. And he recounts that subsequent
argument with Cephas, in which he so energetically
bade him to remember that even he, Cephas, did not
live like a Jew, but believed in Christ in order to be
justified through faith in Christ, and not by works

224 DELIVERANCE

of the law ; since by works of the law shall no flesh
be justified.

Then he turns and demands of them : "Received
ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hear-
ing of the faith ? Are ye so foolish ? having begun
in the Spirit, are ye now perfected in the flesh?9'
May not Paul have pricked himself with this same
sarcasm, and often asked himself these very ques-
tions, while he was adjusting his past with the call
through grace and the revelation of the Son in him,
which first took place on a certain day when on
the road to Damascus ? Some twenty years had
passed since then. And now he quotes to his
Galatians those words from the fifteenth chapter of
Genesis, which seem never to have left his mind —
repeatedly he quotes them, and how often must he
have said them to himself: "Abraham believed God,
and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness."
He draws for his hearers the inference, with which
doubtless he often had assured himself, that he still
was an inheritor of the promise made to Abraham :
"Know therefore that they which be of faith, the
same are sons of Abraham. And the Scripture,
foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles
by faith, preached the Gospel beforehand unto
Abraham, saying, In thee shall all the nations be
blessed." So then they which be of faith are blessed
with the faithful Abraham.

He passes to another comforting passage, this

PAUL 225

time from Habakkuk : "The righteous man shall
live by faith." But Paul comes to it in this Epistle
through the jarring curses of the law, and the re-
demption which the crucifixion worked — straining,
as it may seem to us, the connexion if not the meaning
of the passages. Had he meant that no one could
be justified by the works of the law, and yet whoever
failed in them had been accursed ; but now Christ,
hanging upon the tree, had abolished the curse for
his believers, and made firm their justification
through faith ?

He next argues that Christ is the seed, in whom
the covenant with Abraham is confirmed. The
law was added because of transgressions, till the
seed should come, to whom the promise had been
made, this promise which enures to the salvation of
those who believe in Christ. Till then, we were
wards of the law, but now are no longer in its tute-
lage. At this point, Paul's great conclusion — and
his own spirit — flings itself free: :'For ye are all
sons of God, through faith in Christ Jesus." And
the conclusion is immediately substantiated: "For
as many of you as were baptised into Christ did put
on Christ. There can be neither Jew nor Greek,
there can be neither bond nor free, there can be no
male and female : for ye are all one man in Christ
Jesus." Yet still the clinging Jew in Paul turns
back again to reassure his converts, as he once had
needed to reassure himself: "And if ye are Christ's,

0

226 DELIVERANCE

then are ye Abraham's seed, heirs according to
promise." But while in tutelage as children, until
the time appointed by the Father, we were in bond-
age to the rudiments, the A-B-C's, perhaps, the
elemental spirits (o-rot^eia TOV KOO-/AOV; where did
Paul get this word so much used in primary edu-
cation and in philosophy ?), until in the fulness of
time God sent his Son, born under the law, that he
might redeem those under the law, and we might
receive the adoption of sons : would ye who now
know God turn back to the beggarly elements !

Thus he fiercely clinches his argument; as in
times past he often may have driven it home to
himself. One must remember that none of Paul's
extant Epistles was written till many years after
the vision on the road ; their fully reasoned out
assurances may have come to their author slowly
through toil and struggle.1 And how fierce and liv-
ing are the arguments in these Epistles ! arguments
which Paul must so often have levelled at his own
difficulties. Indeed, did he ever altogether cast off
his reliance on these arguments which had established
his freedom from the law ? In this Epistle to the
Galatians, at least, he is not yet satisfied that he has
convinced them fully, for he allegorises from the

1 Though it is hazardous to rely on Acts for the exact speeches
of Paul, Acts xiii. 16-41 seems to give an early stage of Paul's
preaching before he had fully worked out the arguments of his
Epistles.

PAUL 227

two sons of Abraham, the one by a handmaid, born
after the flesh, the other by the free woman, born
through promise, — the promise which is unto us.
Then he warns them not to receive circumcision;
for in Christ neither circumcision nor uncircum-
cision availeth, but faith working through love.

In these last words, Paul's argument, and he with
it, again flings off its fetters; and he continues,
admonishing the Galatians practically with the
beautiful disencumbered ethics of Christ. Closing,
again he warns them against those who insist on
circumcision, and do not themselves keep the law
(no more than Cephas did !). They would glory in
your flesh ! 'But far be it from me to glory, save
in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which
the world has been crucified to me, and I unto the
world. For neither is circumcision anything, nor
uncircumcision, but a new creature. And as many
as shall walk by this rule, peace be upon them, and
mercy, and upon the Israel of God. From hence-
forth let no man trouble me : for I bear branded on
my body the marks of Jesus. The grace of our
Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen."

Paul's phrases have long since become pious
commonplaces, emptied or filled with meaning
to suit the user. But Paul, when he said that
through the cross of Christ the world had been
crucified to him and he to the world, meant verily
that his old life — his sinful nature — had gone

228 DELIVERANCE

out of him, and was replaced with the eternal life
of Christ, and that thereby he was literally a new
creature, from which the old had passed away.
We must accustom ourselves to read in such words
of Paul the veritable, almost corporeal, meaning
which they carried for him, if we would form an
idea of the adjustment which it was given him to
attain.

That may now be approached through a sheer and
well-nigh literal acceptance of what he is saying
in the opening chapters of the first Epistle to the
Corinthians. He is beseeching them to have done
with divisions, one saying, "I am of Paul," and
another, "I am of Apollos"; and he is glad that
he himself baptised so few of them, lest they might
say they were baptised in his name. And thereupon,
according to the greatness of his nature, Paul lifts
the matter above their small contentions, into the
region of the truth of Christ. "For Christ sent
me not to baptise, but to preach the Gospel : not
in wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should
be made void. For the word of the cross is to them
that are perishing foolishness; but unto us which
are being saved it is the power of God" — 8wa/us
Otov — literally, or rather, verily, the power of God.
. . . 'We preach Christ crucified," a stumbling
for the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles, 'but
unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God"

PAUL 229

— again, literally and veritably. And then when
Paul has referred to his own feebleness, and theirs,
he tells them he has not preached persuasive words
of wisdom, but set forth a demonstration of spirit
and power: "that your faith should not stand in
the wisdom of men, but in the power of God,"
literally again, h Svva/*« Oeov. "For the Kingdom
of God is not in word but in power."

He shows them that as the spirit of man under-
stands human things, so "none knoweth the things
of God save the spirit of God," which "we received'3

— again, literally. "Now the natural man receiveth
not the things of the spirit of God; for they are
foolishness unto him . . . but we have the mind of
Christ," — we have been given the mind of Christ,
and it is that which within us, in the place of our
old minds, understands the things of God. 'Know
ye not that ye are a temple of God, and the spirit of
God dwelleth in you ?" He speaks figuratively,
but also with absolute literalness : "the spirit of
God dwelleth in you." Then, showing them how
that he is, before the world, a fool for Christ's
sake, naked, buffeted, and blessing when reviled, he
admonishes them as to their sinfulness with that
splendid religious ethics of his, and brings his exhor-
tation back to this same clinching question, which
was to be taken literally : "Know ye not that your
body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you,
which you have from God ?"

230 DELIVERANCE

We are moving in the atmosphere of Paul's ad-
justment, and may now in some degree appreciate
its contents and periphery. His large nature needed
an assurance manifold and comprehensive, satisfying
to his heart as well as mind, and including the salva-
tion of his beloved fellows. As a foundation, his feet
were planted in the monotheism of the prophets of
his race: 'We know that no idol is anything in
the world, and that there is no god but one ... to
us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all
things, and we unto him, and one Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom are all things, and we through
him." *

Paul realises Christ as "the image of the invisible
God, the first-born of all creation; ... all things
have been created through him and unto him; and
he is before all things, and in him all things consist
... in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead
bodily '' (Col. i. 15; ii. 9). "In whom we have re-
demption, the forgiveness of sins. . . . For it was
the good pleasure of the Father . . . through him
to reconcile all things unto himself, having made
peace through the blood of his cross* (Col. i).
We " believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from
the dead, who was delivered up for our trespasses,
and was raised for our justification. Being therefore
justified by faith, we have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. iv. 25; v. i).
1 1 Cor. viii. 4. Cf. Acts xxiv. 14 ; xxxvi. 6.

PAUL

231

Paul's conception of the nature and function of
Christ is one of the wonderful things of history.
With him, God, the Father of all, is the source of
power and life and love. But the fulness of the
Godhead dwelleth bodily in Christ, and it is in Christ
that Paul virtually lives and moves and has his be-
ing : unto the measure of whose fulness tendeth the
stature of the full-grown man; he is the absolute
standard ; his love constraineth us, and the spirit of
Christ is life within us — that which does away
with the sinfulness and mortality of the flesh.
"The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus
our Lord"' (Rom. vi. 23). "But ye are not in the
flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the spirit of God
dwelleth in you. But if any man hath not (literally
"hath not") the spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of
sin ; but the spirit is life because of righteousness.
But if the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from
the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ
Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal
bodies through his spirit that dwelleth in you '
(Rom. viii. 9).

It is hazardous to attempt to state Paul's thoughts,
his convictions, his expressions of the power through
which he lived, in any language save his own;
and even then we may doubt whether we grasp his
words in the significance they bore for him. Justifi-
cation by faith ! surely : yet how that legally ar-

232 DELIVERANCE

rived at principle pales before the living Christ in
whom is life ! As Paul had risen from the law, and
had wrestled himself free from the bondage of its
arguments, his adjustment was to be no longer of
the reason only, or even mainly. It was of the whole
man, comforted, assured, dwelling in the lordship
and power of the loving and saving Christ.

* Though our outward man is decaying, yet our
inward man is renewed day by day. For our light
affliction, which is for the moment, worketh for us
more and more an eternal weight of glory . . . we
know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be
dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not
made with hands, eternal, in the heavens. . . . For
the love of Christ constraineth us, since we judge
that as one died for all, therefore all died ; and he died
for all, that they which live should no longer live
unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes
died and rose again. Wherefore we henceforth
know no man after the flesh ; even though we have
known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know him
so no more. Wherefore if any man is in Christ,
he is a new creature : the old things have passed
away; behold, they are become new. But all
things are from God, who reconciled us to himself
through Christ. . . . God was in Christ reconciling
the world unto himself " (2 Cor. iv and v).

And how had not the great Apostle, to whom the
word of reconciliation had been committed (2 Cor.

PAUL 233

v. 19), to whom had been vouchsafed visions, up-
liftings to the heavens, and the revelation of Christ
within himself, how had he not felt the power of God
in his own weakness, when he had prayed that the
" stake in the flesh'' might be removed, and the
answer had been : "My grace is sufficient for thee;
for power is perfected in weakness."

One need not pause to say that in Paul's adjust-
ment, justification by faith — the spirit of Christ in
the believer ! — is organically united with all right-
eousness, and separated from all sin and sinfulness,
an ethical union and separation which is expanded
and emphasised throughout Paul's Epistles. The
final bond of all, and even the inmost principle of
salvation, is love — the love of God, the love of
Christ, the love of man. * Who shall separate us from
the love of Christ ? shall tribulation, or anguish, or
persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or
sword ? Nay, in all these things we are more than
conquerors through him that loved us. For I am
persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor things present nor things to
come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any
other creature, shall be able to separate us from the
love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

All spiritual gifts, all manifestations of the power
of life within us, are they not of the same spirit
of God ? diversities of workings, and the same God
who worketh all things in all ? And are we not all

234 DELIVERANCE

members of the same body of Christ ? For the ob-
taining of these gifts of the Spirit, these freely
bestowed powers of God, which are one in their
source of Christ, " a still more excellent way show I
unto you." And Paul breaks into his lyric chapter
on the indispensable and excellent sufficiency of
love, in that adjustment which unites the relation-
ships between men with the relationship of man to
God. It is this necessary principle and fact of love,
this having within himself the mind of Christ, which
will not permit Paul to rest in any adjustment, or
assurance of salvation, that does not include the
salvation of his loved fellow-beings: 'Wherefore,
my brethren beloved and longed for, my joy and
my crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my beloved"
(Phil. iv. i). "I say the truth in Christ, I lie not,
my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy
Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain
in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were
anathema from Christ for my brethren's sake, my
kinsmen after the flesh, who are Israelites" (Rom.
ix. i).

These are the horns, not so much of Paul's di-
lemma as of his full adjustment and salvation.
The fervour of his Epistles, which may become a
veritable /wror, belongs to his passion to save men in
Christ. It pours through the Epistles to the Philip-
piansand the Thessalonians — through all his Epistles
indeed : " For I am jealous over you with a godly

PAUL 235

jealousy ! . . . Of the Jews five times received I
forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with
rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck
. . . in journeyings often, in perils in the city, in
perils in the wilderness ... in labour and travail,
in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness. Beside
those things that are without, there is that which
presseth upon me daily, anxiety for all the churches.
Who is weak, and I am not weak ? who is made to
stumble, and I burn not ?J! (2 Cor. xi. 2 sqq.).
"For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of glorying?
Are not even ye, before our Lord Jesus at his coming ?
. . . for now we live if ye stand fast in the Lord"
(i Thess. ii. 19; iii. 8).

In common with the disciples of Jesus, Paul
shared the expectation of the near coming of the
Lord, — even before their generation should have
passed away. Questions were rife in the first Chris-
tian communities as to the manner of the resurrec-
tion, and even as to the relative advantages or prec-
edence, on that day, of the living and the dead.
'But we would not have you ignorant, brethren,
concerning them that fall asleep. . . . For if we
believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them
also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring
with him. For this we say unto you by the word
of the Lord, that we that are alive, that are left until
the coming of the Lord, shall in no wise precede
them that are fallen asleep. For the Lord himself

236 DELIVERANCE

shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the
voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God :
and the dead in Christ shall rise first : then we that
are alive, that are left, shall together with them be
caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air :
and so shall we ever be with the Lord* (i Thess.
iv. 13-17). Without a realisation of this conviction
of Paul's one cannot understand all parts of the
fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, as when he
says: 'We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be
changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at
the last trump : for the trumpet shall sound, and
the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall
be changed. For this corruption must put on incor-
ruption, and this mortal must put on immortality."

Mightily Paul preached the resurrection, without
which his own peace, his adjustment, his assurance
of salvation, were an idle song, as he knew. "If
in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all
men most pitiable. ... If the dead are not
raised, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."

And his comfort of assurance lay in the life in
Christ, and the sure expectation of the coming of
the Lord. Wherefore, in the midst of stripes and
persecutions, his heart did steadily rejoice, and bade
his brethren also to rejoice : '' Rejoice in the Lord
always : again I will say, rejoice. . . . The Lord
is at hand. In nothing be anxious. . . . And the
peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall

PAUL 237

guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus.
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, what-
soever things are honorable, whatsoever things are
just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things
are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report;
if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise,
think on these things" (Phil. iv).

Thus Paul joins together the factors of his peace,
which rested in the Lord, in his near coming, in the
joy of his own and his fellows' salvation, — saved
in part through his ministry; which rested also in
purity of life, and in the love which worketh all
things in love ; love which is very near to knowledge,
very near to the realisation of the purposes of God.
"For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth is
named, that he would grant you, according to the
riches of his glory, that ye may be strengthened with
power through his spirit in the inward man; that
Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith ;
to the end that ye, being rooted and grounded in
love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints
what is the breadth and length and height and
depth, and to know the love of Christ which passeth
knowledge, that ye may be filled unto all the fulness
of God" (Eph. iii. 14-19).

This last sentence, whether Paul wrote it, or it be
by another hand, is Paul, in the richness and power
of his manifold nature and his acceptance of Christ.

CHAPTER XI
AUGUSTINE

TN the three centuries elapsing between the death
-^ of Paul and the birth of Augustine, Chris-
tianity had pressed itself with vital insistency
upon the Greco-Roman world, until it had won
recognition as the religion of the Empire. If the
Gospel had triumphed, it was also to some extent
led captive through its adaptation to the ways in
which the centuries of its reception could understand
and accept it. Yet, at the same time, the Gospel,
or whatever constituted the vitality of Christianity,
was constantly advancing through emergence and
disclaimer, keeping itself free from those elements of
its environment which it could not accept or as-
similate without impairing its organic consistency
and power.

These are the two general and intimately com-
plementary phases of the process resulting in the
Christianity of the fourth century. Both are repre-
sented in Augustine. But his life evolved elements
of its own, those personal features of his own spiritual
growth which completed the Latin understanding of
Christianity, or, if one will, the mode of its reception
by the Latin world. Latin Christianity becomes it-

238

AUGUSTINE 239

self in Augustine, who represents, resumes in his
experience and efforts the processes through which it
had become what it was, not in the year 354 when he
was born, but in the year 430, when he died, having
finished his work. For the matter of its growth,
the contents of its mutations, since apostolic times,
were purified and finished in his person. The greater,
or at least the better, part of what was to endure of
prior teaching was taken up and transmitted through
the unifying and somewhat transforming personality
of Augustine. He forms the basis, and even the
structure, of the Western Christianity of the next
thousand years.

Regarded from another point of view, Augustine
exemplifies the tremendous power carried in the
main interest or most vital energy of an age. What
would he have been, what would his life have
amounted to, had he not accepted Christianity ?
In it he developed his powers, and brought his
faculties to actualisation. He was bred to a pro-
fession which had lost all creativeness, and stood
for the final sterility of Greco-Roman culture. As
long as he remained a professor of rhetoric, — of
pagan literature and oratory, — he moved in that dry
atmosphere, his own faculties unvitalised, literally
unformed, for lack of a certain purpose and a goal.
Then he was led to become a Christian. With his
conversion, gradually, by no means at once, he and
all his faculties and all his knowledge gained form,

;

DELIVERANCE

and a unity of inspiration, till they filled and ex-
panded with the fulness and the power of Christ.

The vast majority of the people of any age are
busied with their narrow daily interests. Their
further hopes and fears are not insistent; they are
but slightly moved either by religious devotion or
spiritual unrest. It is but the remnant that ex-
periences religious fervour or anxiety. The rest
accept suggestions, go with the tendency set by this
remnant, and so pass from one spiritual dulness to
another. Making these provisos, one may speak of
the pagan world, in the first centuries of the Christian
era, as restless and touched with yearning for a divine
salvation. The words of Augustine which have
always been taken as the key-note of the movements
of his soul, were applicable to that pagan world :
"fecisti nos ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum
donee requiescat in te." Manifestly, the pagan
world was seeking a new spiritual deliverance.

The Christian Gospel was a means to this salva-
tion, a balm for this unrest. In it, to note its tan-
gible form and the manner of its presentation,
Christ was the Saviour, and the healer of bodies as
well as souls. He offered eternal life, in the place of
mortality and death. He cured sin as a disease,
he the good physician, his ministers also healing in
the power of the Spirit. He saved, moreover,
from the demons which possessed and terrified the
world, causing insanity, disease, and sin. His

AUGUSTINE 241

apostles, his bishops and preachers, were likewise
casters out of demons, bringers of sanity, exercisers:
they were expelling sin and demons from among
men. In accordance with these functions of its
ministers, the Gospel moved in the power of love
and charity. Those accepting it formed a com-
munity, devoted to its transmission and to the care
of the human means and instruments. Each
community provided for its teachers, for its widows
and orphans ; for the sick, for slaves, for prisoners in
the mines, and for the bodies of the dead. The
Church, moreover, that is, the universal and duly
constituted body of believers acting through their
ordained representatives, was rapidly becoming
the fountain-head of divine power on earth. For
the Church possessed the authority to interpret
and declare the contents of the faith and the meaning
of the Old Testament, with its proofs of Christ and
wealth of prototypal institutions ; also the authority
not only to interpret, but even to make, the New
Testament, by establishing its canon; and finally
the authority to order and administer the Christian
rites of baptism and the Lord's Supper, which were
becoming sacramental mysteries, and to which other
sacraments were soon added. The sacramental
ritual grew apace, developing what was Christian
in origin and adopting unconsciously much from the
world to which believers, before conversion, had
belonged. Naturally these did not altogether lay
R

242 DELIVERANCE

aside their former intellectual and spiritual habits
on becoming Christians. Dwelling in an atmos-
phere of religious emotion, the uncritical souls of
these early Christians were fertile receptacles for
superstitions which, wearing new masks or old, were
the same in Christianity and paganism.

Yet, although founded on concrete revelation,
and representing transmitted authority, and feeding
upon superstitions, the Church, which was the body
of believers, and in a mystic sense the body of Christ,
also admitted reason and reasonableness, as a co-
ordinate determinant of its rejections and accept-
ances. The Gospel was a faith with all ; with some
it might also be a philosophy. So, just as the
Church accepted superstitions and elements of
sacramental magic from the pagan world, it also
appropriated its knowledge and its reason; and
soon maintained, in self-justification, that pagan
philosophy, so far as it contained elements of truth,
received them from the Christian God, or borrowed
them from the Scriptures. The believing com-
munities constituting the Church of Christ made
a people newly set apart to God ; yet they conceived
themselves to have existed from the beginning
as the chosen Israel of God, the human vessel of
divine truth. Though still unrecognised by the
Jews and the pagan multitude, the Church had
become with Origen, in the third century, the all-
embracing and all-ordering kingdom, the KOO-/*O$ TOV

AUGUSTINE 243

With Augustine, in greater power, it is,
had always been, shall always be, the City of God.

If a new religion, flung into the world, is"to endure,
it must remain itself, and not become something
else. Yet if it would be accepted by the world,
it must present itself in intelligible modes, receive
from the world whatever is pertinent and not
hostile to its spirit, and adapt itself to the world
in matters of the world — thus rendering unto
Caesar what is Caesar's. While it cannot be eclectic,
it may be selective and synthetic.

This dual need of self-preservation and adaptation
to the world pressed upon the new-born Christian
faith. In meeting it the Gospel's energies took form
in three phases of constructive action : the organisa-
tion of the Christian Church, the ordering of the
Christian life, the formulation of the Christian
faith. They are not to be too sharply distinguished
in treatment, seeing how dynamically interwoven
in their action were these phases of Christian energy.
A vast amount of learning has been devoted to their
elucidation.

An outer, as it were, secular organisation of the
Church was needed for the preservation and regula-
tion of the life and faith of the Christian communi-
ties, and even for the maintenance of life and order,
in those centuries of political disintegration. The

1 Contra Celsum, viii, Chapters 67-75, cited by Harnack in
The Mission and Extension of Christianity, etc.

244 DELIVERANCE

Latin, or Roman, Catholic Church (our mind is
fixed upon the West), which gradually took form in
response to this need, may not improperly be viewed
as the final creation of the Roman political genius,
though its creation was inspired with other motives
than those which had made great the Republic
and the Empire. The Church was the embodiment
of Christian unity and Christian order, of Christ's
divine authority on earth, of fellowship with Christ
and participation in salvation. The authority
which Christ was recorded to have delivered to the
Apostles, became in the course of time vested in the
bishops as their successors. These were ranged
under their metropolitans, and eventually under
the bishop of Rome; they acted corporately in
councils. The Church was intrusted with the
ministration of the Sacraments, which were the
means of grace, the vehicles of life, without which
no one could be saved. There was, therefore, no
salvation without the Church : Salus extra eccle-
siam non est, says Cyprian. Upon this conviction,
and its own grand organisation, the Church was
to hold itself erect while the Empire crumbled
about it.

Obviously the organising of the Church and its
investment with authority over many things of this
world, according to the needs of an earthly society,
could not but result in its partial secularisation.
The springs of the spirit, inconveniently vagrant

AUGUSTINE 245

in Apostolic times, were gathered to ecclesiastic
channels, and administered through sacerdotal
conduits, through which alone, and also unfailingly,
flowed the divine grace. In conflict with the revolt
of Montanist enthusiasts, in the late second century,
the Church maintained its exclusive official authority
over the gifts of the Spirit ; maintained, as well, its
authority to promulgate Christian doctrine and
order Christian life.

The need of an authoritative organ to declare,
and keep declaring, what was and what was not
Christian doctrine, had promoted the organisation
of the authoritative Church. The rapid encroach-
ments of a semi-Christian Gnosticism in the second
century threatened the Gospel's existence as a
definite fact and revelation. In order to combat
Gnosticism, throw it off, and keep Christianity
from becoming a congeries of phantasies, the Church
proclaimed the Apostolic Creed and fixed the
Apostolic Canon of the New Testament. Next, a
reciprocally correlated conception was reached (by
Irenaeus) of the Gospel both as the revealed rule of
belief and conduct, and as the way of veritable
transformation of corrupt and mortal manhood
through the spirit of Christ. Under the former
aspect, eternal life would appear as a reward ;
under the latter, it was a supernatural gift. From
these broad bases the formulation of dogma pro-
ceeded according to the twofold need of presenting

246 DELIVERANCE

the Gospel in conformity to the intellectual in-
sistencies of the Greco-Roman world, and of con-
demning what was not the Gospel and could not
make part of Christian truth. Accordingly the
doctrine of the nature of Christ, and of the two
natures of Christ, divine and human, was worked
out with infinite toil and fierce anathemas. In this
central field of Christian dogma, the Church argued
in the categories of Greek (mainly Neoplatonic)
philosophy ; although, in the Latin West, theologians
also employed the terminology and conceptions of
the Roman Law. While the formulation of these
dogmas proceeded largely through the disavowal
of propositions held erroneous, it was also a creative
process, resulting in the establishment of positive
propositions. They are contained in the Nicene
Creed. That did not contravene the teaching
either of Christ or the Apostles, and held to the
realities of the Christian Gospel. It was a necessary
formulation of the Gospel, if all manner of pagan
concepts were to be excluded. Yet it was not
the Gospel, but a restatement of it in terms of
Greek philosophy. If the Creed contradicted many
a thesis of Greek philosophy, Greek philosophy had
nevertheless entered its structure. As touching
these dogmas, the Latin West followed the Hellenic
East; but of itself turned to a more intimate wrest-
ling with the problem of sin, and the relations
between the human will and divine grace ; in which

AUGUSTINE 247

struggle he who proved himself the orthodox protag-
onist was Augustine.

The Church ; dogma ; the Christian life. The last
was builded from the matter of its own living appro-
priation of the Faith, and yet was affected by the
need to accept or reject the pagan life about it. It
began in those inspired enthusiasms of the new
Faith, when the recipients of the Spirit spoke with
tongues, or prophesied, or taught, or healed with
laying on of hands. If there were dissensions,
charity also overflowed. The widow, the fatherless,
the poor, the sick, were cared for. Abundant
giving, extending even to the abandonment of lands
and all possessions, marked the lives of the believers,
and from the first called for official administration.
As Christianity spread among the Gentiles, the
converts naturally withdrew from pagan worship
and from festivals or ceremonies involving sacrifices
or recognition of the pagan gods ; withdrew also
from the games of the circus and gladiatorial com-
bats, which shocked the newly awakened Christian
conscience. But many complicated problems rose
for believers : what trades might they pursue, or
follow what professions, when pagan practices
and observances touched the whole round of daily
life ? Could Christians serve in the army, when
the military oath involved recognition of the Em-
peror's divinity ? These exigencies might be met
according to circumstances and individual conviction.

248 DELIVERANCE

Profounder dilemmas were involved in the ques-
tion of the pagan literature and pagan philosophy.
Might Christians teach, or even study, that profane
literature ? This was never answered on principle,
but was solved through acquiescence in the need of
education, which could be had only through pagan
books. As to pagan philosophy, there were sharp
divergences. Some would have none of it, or at
least so proclaimed ; but it was as necessary as the
breath of life, necessary indeed for those doctors
who would state the Faith in terms satisfying to their
own philosophically educated minds, or in a manner
to be convincing to educated pagans. Neither was
this problem solved on principle, but was worked
out, as Jerome and Augustine worked it out through
the needs of their lives and labours.

An even more ideal question — beauty. High-
minded Christians sought to turn from the lures of
sculptured ivory and living flesh to the beauties
of the Christian spirit — the beauty of the soul
and God. Plato had felt and thought the like
before them. Connected with beauty were lust
and love, which offered the most insistent of all
problems. Augustine was to reach a solution
rilling the utmost reaches of his soul, as he merged
or proportioned human loves in the love of God.
But, before him, the Christian communities had
gone far toward setting the virgin state above the
married, and toward demanding celibacy of bishops

AUGUSTINE 249

and presbyters ; while the most prodigious solution of
this problem, the Christian working answer to the
plea for severance from the lusts of paganism and the
sinful world, had been given in the hermit lives of
hundreds of imitators of St. Anthony, and in the
even mightier commencements of corporate monasti-
cism.

Did the hot sun of western Northern Africa
breed fiery, sensual, and spiritually grasping tempera-
ments ? It was an eager, even violent land. The
people who were not Christians held ardently to
their religions, hating the Christians who stood aloof
from long-cherished practices. Nowhere else was
persecution so fiercely called for by the pagan popu-
lation. On their side, the Christians were fervent.
The martyrs passed to the arena with devoted
constancy. Montanism had come originally from
Phrygia; but that unmanageable, irreconcilable
form of Christianity flourished nowhere as in Africa.
There it denounced the worldliness, and scorned the
authority, of the Church, itself spurning all adapta-
tion to the world. And there Tertullian, greatest
of Christian advocates and of Latin theologians
before Augustine, became a Montanist through his
headstrong ardour and tenacious egotism.

Augustine was African by birth and breeding.
He was a man of passion and desire, of restless
temper, gifted with an analytic and constructive

250 DELIVERANCE

mind, and destined, under the impulsion of Christian-
ity, to prove a spiritual genius. He was loving and
devoted, and yet a constraining egotism marshalled
his faculties, impelled and informed their action,
and drove him on to the giving of himself to God
or rather to the winning of God. From his youth
he had thought on his ultimate adjustment with life ;
and he became ever more interested, if not absorbed,
in reaching some assurance, even an assurance of
salvation. No small subjective satisfaction could
accord with his largeness of mind. Assurance of
his personal salvation must include the final settle-
ment of his opinions, convictions as they became,
regarding everything of salient import for human
destiny. It was a necessity of his nature to bring
his thoughts on God and man and all things into a
religious unison, wherein they should work to-
gether for the assurance of the soul's salvation. If
in his Soliloquies, near the time of his conversion,
he desired to know only God and the. soul, it was
because his previous thoughts had resolved every-
thing of vital interest for man into the relationship
between the soul and God.

Primarily and always, Augustine sought his peace
— in God. But as he reached the first stage of
certitude in his conversion, his energies expanded,
and took form in labours to complete his own salva-
tion, and, through a vindication of true doctrine,
safeguard the faith of the Church. Henceforth

AUGUSTINE 251

the arguments with which he maintained Christian
truth and the Church's authority against Mani-
chaeans, against pagans, against Donatists and
Pelagians, served likewise to substantiate and perfect
the peace which he had won. For that peace
could be secured only through a spiritual progress
which should include the overthrow of every threaten-
ing argument, and the settlement of the problems
pressing on the soul.

There is universal significance in the course taken
by Augustine's adjustment, in the manner, if one
will, of his working himself out of previous insufficient
adjustments till he found refuge in the Christian
God, — a refuge which he was to make large enough
for all. For the universality of his desiring and in-
vestigating nature led him on through all the stages
by which, before the time of his conversion, the
Church had won its triumph over the passion and
the reason of the heathen world, and also had
kept itself the true Church of Christ. But Augus-
tine's adjustment will lead further still. For,
living when many a searching Christian question
was unsettled, through one and the same series of
intellectual, or, rather, spiritual, achievements,
he perfected his deliverance and completed Christian
doctrine.

A general knowledge of Augustine's life may be
assumed. Recently a charming book has been
made of it : Saint Augustin, by Louis Bertrand.

252 DELIVERANCE

One may say that he did not cease to be pagan in
his mode of life until he had become Christian in
his convictions. Only thus was he freed from lusts
of the flesh, and from a manner of living ministering
to them in a moderate degree. It is to our purpose
to follow the mental steps leading him from one
and another opinion not in accord with Christianity.
For each of these opinions represented an obstacle
to the acceptance of Christianity, and at the same
time a section of the path leading to it.

Certain elementary Christian lessons of his child-
hood were never quite forgotten. They seem to
have left a wavering longing or affection in his mind
for the wonderful figure of the Saviour ; the name
of Jesus was always sweet to him. And yet it was
but as a fugitive sound to hark back to, — as with a
hound that is worried, having lost the scent. His
school education at first had no religious bearing;
but gradually became pagan in its influence, as he
progressed in grammar and rhetoric and the study of
the profane literature which made the medium of
these disciplines. Evidently his reading of Cicero's
Hortensius, with its alluring persuasions toward
philosophy, made a deep impression, to judge from
his frequent mention of it. His reading it may have
been an awakening. In after life, he said it turned
his prayers toward God, and filled him with longing
for wisdom, which is with God. The book pleased
him especially since it held no brief for any sect,

AUGUSTINE 253

but rather enkindled within him the loving quest of
wisdom. It lacked one thing which had touched
his heart, the name of Christ. And still the Scrip-
tures themselves, because of their humble guise,
repelled the young rhetorician (Con/, iii, 4 and 5).

He heard that name indeed in the vain mouthings
of the Manichaeans, as he said afterwards; and
partly with that lure they drew him to their sect.
Probably the impression of the evil and the suffering
in the world, and his lack of philosophic enlighten-
ment, made his mind a guest-chamber for their
opinions ; which were full of fantastic fables, and
heavy with material views of God. At the same
time he was painfully stumbling over the Old Testa-
ment narratives, of patriarchs with many wives, and
commended by the mouth of God, although their
conduct was such as men no longer could approve;
for he did not then comprehend the righteousness
which always is the same, and yet may ordain what
is suitable only for a certain time (Con/, iii, 7) ;
nor had he learned, as afterwards from Ambrose, to
interpret the Old Testament "spiritaliter' in its
allegorical truth. If he only could have " con-
ceived spiritual substance," he would quickly have
thrown out the Manichaean arguments (Con/, v, 14).

So in those years of his early manhood at Carthage
he kept company with the Manichaeans, and also
dallied with the Mathematici (astrologers), thinking
well of them because they neither sacrificed nor

254 DELIVERANCE

prayed to any spirit to direct their divinations. He
did not realise the folly of their doctrine that a man's
sin or sinlessness is fixed by the stars. A certain
wise physician pointed out to him the deceit, or at
most haphazard agreement, of their vain prognostica-
tions, — and yet he clung to them, for want of a sure
refutation.

It was also in these Carthaginian years that the
death of a friend showed him the futility of "spilling
his soul upon the sand in loving that which was
mortal as if it were not," — a first lesson in the dis-
cipline which directs the mind toward the love of God
and the love of men in God. Although he deemed
beauty to be the chief element of the lovable, the
lower forms of beauty held his thoughts. Num
amamus aliquid nisi pulchrum, exclaimed his
sensuous or aesthetic nature; while his questing
spirit asked what is beauty ? what is this which
draws us to the things we love ? He made his first
essay on authorship, with a book upon this subject,
entitled "de pulchro et apto," 'The beautiful and
fit." In later life he looked back upon this book
through the altered perspective of maturer thoughts :
'But I saw not yet the essential matter in thy art,
Almighty One, who alone makest marvellous things ;
and my mind was going through corporeal forms;
and I was defining and distinguishing what was
beautiful in itself, what was fit, and what gains grace
through adaptation to something; and I was

AUGUSTINE 255

furnishing my argument with corporeal illustrations.
Also I turned me to the nature of the soul, and the
false view I had of spiritual substances did not per-
mit me to perceive the truth. ... I was averting
my mind from the incorporeal thing toward linea-
ments and colors and swelling magnitudes, and
because I could not find them in the soul, I thought
I could not see my soul. And since in virtue I
loved peace, and in vice hated discord, I saw unity
in the one and division in the other; and the ra-
tional mind as well as the essence of truth and of
the summum bonum seemed set in that unity, while
in that division I deemed there dwelt I know not
what substance of irrational life, an essential sum-
mum malum — not only substance but life, and yet
not dependent on thee, my God, from whom are
all things" (Con/, iv, 15).

Some years before, he had been given the Cate-
gories of Aristotle, which he first gaped at as some-
thing divine, then quickly mastered, but only to
find little help ; since he could not imagine that the
attributes of God were in God as in a subject, seeing
that God is each of his attributes — as his magnitude,
his beauty. Perhaps Augustine's dissatisfaction
with the little Aristotelian masterpiece was a stage
in his approach to more spiritual thoughts of God ;
but not till long afterwards did he learn to know
that beauty, which God was, from which the creature
beauties had so long kept him.

256 DELIVERANCE

The approach of his thirtieth year found him still
in Carthage, but very restless. Why not try his
fortune as a professor of rhetoric in Rome ? He set
sail, with letters from the Manichaeans of Carthage,
although he no longer approved their doctrines.
In Rome he realised that he and they must soon
part company; though he still had not freed him-
self from the thought of God as material substance,
nor from conceiving evil as a substance gross as
earth or thin as air, yet always some sort of bulk or
body, which the good God could not have created.
He still thought that God was limited and finite in
relation to evil. He imagined the Saviour as issu-
ing (porrectum) from a mass of the brightest divine
substance ; — how could he have been born of the
Virgin and not have suffered defilement as part of
her flesh ?

Amidst these doubts, his mind turned naturally
to the chief advocates of philosophic doubt, the
Academics — Carneades and others belonging to the
later Academy called of Plato. They seemed the
wisest in holding all things to be in doubt, because
of man's inability to know the truth.

In this state of mind, looking for adjustment
and assurance, and yet not unhappy in the play of
philosophic doubt, Augustine accepted a call to fill
the city chair of Rhetoric in Milan ; it was in the
year 384, and he was still but thirty years of age.
Milan was the usual residence of the imperial court,

AUGUSTINE 257

then Catholic. The town was Christian, with sym-
pathies torn between Catholics and Arians; and
there Ambrose was bishop. On his arrival, Augus-
tine openly shook off Manichaean affiliations, and
resumed the position of a Christian catechumen;
for as such his mother had inscribed him when a
child. He lost no time in paying his respects to
Ambrose, his admiration for whom was soon to
deepen into reverence.

This is the period of Augustine's "Conversion,"
touching which there is the later devotional testi-
mony of his Confessions. But earlier works, written
at the time, indicate a different mood, and disclose
the philosophic questions then busying his mind.
The Confessions are not Wahrheit und Dichtung;
but they are Wahrheit and piety. Ten years of
thought and study, of living and feeling, had elapsed
since he left Milan a baptised Christian. During
those years, his convictions had grown surer and
more definite, had become vibrant with emotion,
and Augustine had acquired the habit of devout
expression. The devoutness of those Confessions,
and their power of feeling, scarcely made part of his
nature in the more inchoate period of his faith.
Yet they do not contradict, so much as supplement,
the earlier writings, which by reason of their tenta-
tive as well as academic character scantily expressed
the emotional crises of that time.

The character of Ambrose drew Augustine toward

258 DELIVERANCE

the Catholic fold. He listened to his preaching
diligently. He learned from it the method of
spiritual, that is to say, allegorical interpretation
of the Old Testament — its hard places, which
"when I had taken them literally, I was killed —
occidebar." Littera occidit, the letter killeth — that
he now learned, and was to understand in time how
the spirit maketh to live. This method of inter-
pretation cleared his mind of any lingering regard
for the arguments which the Manichaeans brought
against the Church. But he inclined the more
strongly toward certain of the Greek philosophers,
and yet '" could not commit the cure of his soul's
languor to them, because they were without the
healing name of Christ." This languor of the half
dilettante pagan soul was, in fact, vigorously expelled
by the energy of the Christian faith, when that had
entered Augustine.

The months passed, Augustine filling the duties
of his professorship; studying also and constantly
turning over in his mind, or discussing with friends
from Africa, the opinions of the different philosophers.
He was still held by the comforts and pleasures of
the flesh, and but for his belief in a life after death,
would even have awarded the palm of the ethical
discussion to Epicurus (Conf. vi, 16). He had
put from him anthropomorphic conceptions of God,
and yet could not conceive him as incorporeal ; but
rather as something corporeal infused in the world

AUGUSTINE 259

and diffused boundlessly about it, always incor-
ruptible and unchangeable: "So that the earth
should have Thee, and the heaven have Thee, and
all things be bounded in Thee, and Thou nowhere
bounded' (Conf. vii, i). Still the problem of
evil plagued him — as he set himself to understand
how that man's free will (liberum voluntatis arbit-
rium) was the cause of our evil-doing and God's
just judgement. But how then ? did not the good
God make him, and that will of his which preferred
evil ? then why should he be punished ? And
he began to imagine the creation vast and mani-
fold, and yet finite, with God surrounding and
penetrating it, everywhere infinite — as an infinite
sea holding and everywhere penetrating a huge
though finite sponge. Where, then, in such a uni-
verse made by omnipotent goodness, could there be
evil ? He was sore perplexed.

Yet, at least he was able to throw off all credence
in the horoscopes cast by the mathematici, astrolo-
gers. (Thus had such godless superstitions clung
to him !) For he considered seriously how different
were the fortunes even of twins, and others born
at the same instant. And still he could find no
outcome to the problem, whence is evil ? God alone,
and no man, knew how he was afflicted with it !

He was to gain light from the works of the Greek
Neoplatonists, translated (for Augustine could
read but little Greek) by a rhetorician and philoso-

260 DELIVERANCE

pher named C. Marius Victorinus, who in the end
had himself become a Christian (cf. Con/, viii, 2).
It seemed to him afterwards that the hand of God
had given him these books. He learned from them,
although in different words, and set forth with many
reasons, that "in the beginning was the Word and
the Word was with God and God was the Word :
this was in the beginning with God : all things
were made through him" — in fine, he learned the
teachings of the "prologue'3 to John's Gospel.
'There also I read that the Word, God, was born
not of flesh, nor of blood, nor of the will of man,
but of God ; but that the Word was made flesh,
and dwelt among us, I did not read there." Save
for this omission, Augustine drew from those books,
or read into them, substantially the Christian Gos-
pel — put in other words.

One need not cavil at Augustine's assimilation of
Neoplatonism with the Christianity of the fourth
century. The two had many common sources and
many similarities, — Neoplatonism and its doc-
trine of the One, the Nous, and the Soul, with
Christianity and its Trinity. Both systems
answered, though with unequal efficacy, to the re-
ligious needs of educated men. Over such stepping-
stones thousands had travelled and still were
travelling to Christ. Augustine, by dint of his Neo-
platonic studies, won through to the conception of
God as spirit — to the conviction indeed that God

AUGUSTINE 261

is spirit : Tn/ev/ma 6 0eos. The view that evil was
not substance, but privation, also began to dawn
on him. But Neoplatonism lacked the clear and
lovable realisation of the divine, which Christianity
possessed in Christ; and Augustine, like many
others, kept on toward that with his arms out-
stretched.

One of the wonders of the Gospel is that its chief
stumbling-block to thoughtful minds is also the net
by which it captures souls, and holds them fast
when taken : to wit, the Incarnation, — God be-
came Man, the Word became Flesh, and dwelt among
us. It was this that Neoplatonism neither had,
nor could explain or assent to. The thought pre-
sented intellectual difficulties almost insurmount-
able. Yet the figure of Christ, his office as Media-
tor, his saving might as Saviour, drew men with
all the cords of anxiety and hope and dawning love.
To accept him thus, was to cease to be a Neo-
platonist and become a Christian. And this
Christ, when once accepted by the believer's mind,
and taken to his heart, became the fulness of certi-
tude, the blessedness of salvation, the ecstasy of
love. The whole mind and heart of man was
drawn in faith to the divine man Christ, and through
him on to God, realised in Christ as love as well as
power; whom for man to know and love is to be
saved, and in whom is man's delight for ever.

Augustine was led on by the books of the Neo-

262 DELIVERANCE

platonists to think of God as incorporeal, and seek
him as the incorporeal truth. Yet they could not
bring him the stable enjoyment of this spiritually
conceived object of his thought, which should be
as well the object of his entire devotion. The
strength to rest in the thoughts and love of God,
as Augustine knew later, could be had only in and
through 'the mediator of God and men, the man
Christ Jesus." But as yet he thought of Jesus
only as a man of excellent wisdom, and could not
grasp the mystery of the Word made flesh.

He began to study the Epistles of Paul; and in
them he found disclosed the mystery of the law in
his members warring against the law of God after
the inner man, the flesh lusting against the spirit;
and learned that from this conflict, the body of this
death, the one deliverance was the grace of God
through Jesus Christ. Only through the grace of
God in Christ could he reach that peace and stable
power of abiding in the love and knowledge and joy
of God.

He was now minded to become a Christian, and
one day was sharply pricked at hearing the story
of the life of St. Anthony. The impulses toward
Christ gathering in his soul moved him with power.
Their action is set in a dramatic scene in which his
bosom's friend Alypius is a silent actor. 'What
are we about," he cried. 'The unlearned storm
heaven before us, while we wallow in flesh and blood."

AUGUSTINE 263

He went out from his house, into the little attached
garden, followed by his friend. His mind was in a
storm. If he could only end the war between the
world's desires and his higher consecration ! He
broke into tears, and moving away from his won-
dering friend, cast himself down, weeping, beneath
a fig tree. It was not long before a voice was heard
saying " take and read " ; and remembering that
Anthony had been inspired from hearing a Gospel
passage, Augustine returned to where he had left
the volume of Paul's writings by the side of his
friend, opened and read, " not in rioting and drunken-
ness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in
strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in con-
cupiscentiis." He showed the passage to his friend
— they knew each other's hearts. Alypius read
further : " Him that is weak in faith, receive " ;
which he applied to his own case. The two entered
the house, and told all to Augustine's mother, who
exulted and rejoiced. "For Thou didst turn me
to Thee, so that I no longer sought for a wife; nor
any hope in this world."

Not long after this, Augustine gave up his public
professorship, and with his mother and sundry
close friends retired to the seclusion of a little villa
near Milan. There together they led — he as their
master — a life of academic intercourse and de-
votional meditation. Augustine spent much of his

264 DELIVERANCE

time inditing philosophic dialogues — the early
writings before alluded to. The discussions in them,
after the manner of the time, had nothing to do
with exact knowledge, but rather circled round and
round the problems of man's happiness, his im-
mortality, and God's providence. Such topics en-
grossed the thoughts of spiritually minded pagans
who were seeking "truth," or rather their salvation,
and were inclining toward the assurances of Chris-
tianity.

Thus, in "three books," De Academicis or Contra
Academicos, Augustine takes up the arguments of
those philosophic doubters, and discusses whether
the search for truth, without its attainment, can
make one wise and happy ; also what is error, what
is wisdom, what is probable, and what is true ; the
opinions of a number of philosophers are considered.
He was composing at the same time his De beata
Fita, showing that one cannot be happy when he
has not what he wishes, and that no one is sapiens
who is not beatus. With such arguments Augustine
gently pushed himself along toward a Christian
conclusion, that the blessed life consists in the rever-
ent knowledge of the Truth and the full fruition of
it. At that time he also wrote his De Ordine, on
the divine providence ; in which a reference to his
praying in tears — illacrymans — shows that the
Christian impulse was moving him emotionally.
As likewise appears in his Soliloquies, a book of

AUGUSTINE 265

devotional reason written at the same time, where,
often Platonically, he discusses the two things he
desires to know, God and the soul. It may be added
that his letters as yet show little that is specifically
Christian. On his return to Milan, he wrote upon
the immortality of the soul, and afterwards (387-
389) composed six books of academic instruction,
De Musicay chiefly upon versification.

In this country retreat, Augustine had also en-
deavoured to instruct himself in the Scriptures, by
studying Isaiah upon the advice of Ambrose. He
was quietly baptised at the Easter celebration in
the year 387, his son Adeodatus and his friend
Alypius with him. After which it was decided to
return to Africa; and the little company journeyed
by slow stages to take ship at Ostia, where Monica,
his mother, died. It was there that Augustine and
his mother, gazing from a window, and discoursing
on the things of God, were rapt in an ecstasy of
contemplation, to which Christian souls do ever
and anon attain, but which as Augustine narrates
it, was quite as Neoplatonic as Christian. When
his mother was dead, he fell to praying for her soul,
as was the custom in the Church.

The stages of Augustine's conversion were affected
by his personal equation, and impressed with his
individuality. Perhaps they do not reflect directly
the general course of conflict with the various
phases of paganism, from which Christianity had

266 DELIVERANCE

emerged triumphant. Augustine set forth that
conflict, which was also his, more universally in the
first ten books of the City of God. There, in the
name of Christianity, he first refuted the belief that
the heathen gods helped their worshippers effectively
to the good things of this world, and then the
opinion that their power was salutary for the life
to come. He also showed that neither fortune nor
the position of the stars was the cause of the power
of the Roman Empire. Afterwards he took up that
most difficult contest of the Faith with the theology
of those Greek philosophers who agreed that God
existed and had a care for men, yet were not satisfied
with worshipping him alone in order to obtain eternal
life, but must also practise the cult of many gods
besides. They recognised God as above the Soul,
the creator of it and of the earth and all things
visible; also that the rational principle (to which
genus the human soul belongs) is blessed by par-
ticipation in his unchangeable and incorporeal light.
They were called Platonists after the name of
Plato.

So Augustine brings Christianity triumphant out
from the herd of polytheistic opinions, and finally
vindicates its truth in distinction even from the
views of Plato (or of Plotinus and Porphyry) who
held that beatitude lay not in bodily enjoyment, or
even in the enjoyment of mind, but in the enjoy-
ment of God. " Plato calls God the true and highest

AUGUSTINE 267

good, and will have it that the philosopher is a lover
of God, and since philosophy makes for the blessed
life, the enjoyer of God is that happy one who has
loved God " (Civ. Dei, viii, 8).

As against views so closely approximating to its
highest truths, Augustine could vindicate the Faith
only through that Way by which he himself had
come, — the name and function and dual nature of
Christ. Only through Christ can one come to the
true knowledge and the steadfast love and fruition
of God. Says Augustine in the Civitas Dei: "In
qua ut fidentius ambularet ad veritatem, ipsa veri-
tas, Deus Dei filius, homine adsumto, non Deo
consumto, eandem constituit et fundavit fidem, ut
ad hominis Deum iter esset homini per hominem
Deum. Hie est enim mediator Dei et hominum,
homo Christus lesus. Per hoc enim mediator, per
quod homo, per hoc et via. Quoniam si inter eum
qui tendit et illud quo tendit via media est, spes est
perveniendi; si autem desit aut ignoretur qua
eundem sit, quid prodest nosse quo eundum sit ?
Sola est autem adversus omnes errores via muni-
tissima, ut idem sit Deus et homo ; quo itur Deus,
qua itur homo." 1

l" In order that the mind might advance more confidently
toward the truth, the Truth itself, God the Son of God, manhood
assumed, deity not destroyed, established and found d this faith,
that to man's god there might be a way for man through man god.
This is the Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.
For in that he is man he is mediator and also the way. Since if

268 DELIVERANCE

Thus with final orthodoxy, the Doctor of the
Church speaks for the universal Church ; for him-
self he had said that he could not abide with the
Platonists because within their doctrines he had not
found "ilia aedificans caritas a fundamento hu-
militatis, quod est Christus Jesus5 (Conf. vii, 20).

In attempting now to indicate the adjustment,
the joy and the assurance of salvation which Augus-
tine won, it will not be necessary, nor would it be
possible, to explore the broad regions of spiritual
development through which his rich nature diffused
itself. All writers upon Augustine have found the
man and his work, and his suggestiveness, to exceed
the compass of their power of formulation — and so
did the medieval Church! Even an attempt to
outline the manner of his peace is a presumption,
so far does the vast testimony of his works exceed
the power of our sifting. One may be permitted to
note the seemingly indicative points.

Augustine's chief intellectual difficulties had been
to conceive the spiritual nature of God, and realise
that evil was not substance, but privation or vitia-
tion : " Omnis natura, etiamsi vitiosa est, in quantum
natura est, bona est; in quantum vitiosa est, mala

between him who goes and the whither he goes, there leads a way,
there is hope of arrival. But if the way is wanting or he does not
know how to travel it, what help is there in knowing whither he
must go ? Now the only way fortified against error is when the
same person is at once God and man — God as the goal, man as
the way " (Civ. Dei, xi, 2).

AUGUSTINE 269

est' (Enchiridion, 13). These difficulties sur-
mounted, then through the lure of Christ he came
to Christ, and through the mediatorship of Christ
he came to God. In the previous course of his life,
he had realised and proved the watchword (so fre-
quently quoted) of his Confessions: "fecisti nos ad
te, et inquietum est cor nostrum, donee requiescat in
te." And thenceforth his adjustment, his assurance
of eternal salvation, was to lie, at the end of this un-
quiet course, in the ever fuller and more explicit
realisation of the words of the Psalm which were
always in his heart: "Mihi autem adhaerere deo
bonum est."

God had created us ; we had sinned — how ?
that is the dark question which Augustine darkly
answers. God by grace and love has redeemed us
through Christ; he has thus restored us to com-
munion with himself. The sin is ours, the grace is
his. The sin is against God, the redemption is
from him altogether, and without him we are help-
less, in sin and alienation from our true good, from
the one veritable object of our love and joy.
Through his grace and love we are restored, and
made a new creature, resting in God, — through
Christ. The power of God is perfected in the weak-
ness of human nature. If nearly all of this is Paul,
it is again made new and living with something
added, with something omitted, by which it should
remain the religion of the Western Christian man,

270 DELIVERANCE

from the fourth century, through the Middle Ages,
and through the Reformation.

In the fulfilment of his role as defender of the
authority of the Church, as vindicator of its sacra-
ments, and as the reinspirer and manifold developer
of its doctrine, Augustine at the same time com-
pleted his own adjustment, strengthening it in those
parts where it was open to attack either by opponents
or by his own evolving thought. His exposition of
Church doctrine was always a part of his living
self, and followed the constructive needs of his
searching and desirous genius. The authority of
the Church as the efficacious and only channel of
grace on earth was attacked by the Donatists ; who
would also make the efficacy of its officially admin-
istered sacraments dependent on the faithfulness of
the officiating priest. In combating this sacer-
dotally untenable position, in maintaining that the
Church was the sole authority in matters of faith,
and the one door to salvation, Augustine responded
to his own need of such an authority, and to the
logical requirements of his ecclesiastic nature. For
the authority of the Church was a necessary ele-
ment of his personal peace, which demanded an
authoritative interpreter, even guarantor, of the
Christian Faith. Had not the authoritativeness of
Ambrose held him ? And was not the Church
verily the entire body of Christ ? templum dei,
hoc est totius summae trinitatis, sancta est ecclesia,

AUGUSTINE 271

scilicet universa in caelo et in terra (Enchiridion,
56). The Church is one; the Church is holy; its
union with Christ, its possession of the sanctifying
virtue of the Spirit, is not lessened by the sinfulness
of any number of individuals belonging to it. It is
Catholic, it is Apostolic, it is infallible. Outside of
it, and without the virtue of its sacraments, there is
no union with God through Christ, there is no
redemption, there is no salvation.

Augustine's conceptions of grace and sin were
formed before the Pelagian controversy opened ;
but his convictions fully unrolled themselves only
as he defended what was to him of the essence of
Christian doctrine and of his own adjustment with
God. His faith — the Christian Faith — centres in
God's act, that is, in God's grace and love; and
not in human virtue, or the building up of char-
acter through the action of a virtuously self-directing
will; which was the essence of Pelagianism as well
as Stoicism. And according to Pelagius's views,
human nature, with all its instincts, was essentially
capable of good — not essentially corrupted through
the inheritance of Adam's sin.

Augustine's human and religious experience had
proved for him the falsity of this. He had found
his nature corrupt in its concupiscence, and his
desires warring against the law of God. Not any
virtue of his, not even his own striving, nor any
effective energy of his floundering will, but the

272 DELIVERANCE

freely given grace of God through Christ, had an-
nulled his sinfulness and made him a new creature.
First came grace, prevenient grace, acting in accord-
ance with God's predestinating purpose of salvation
for those who are to be called. Its action creates
the will to believe — the velle credere — in those
who are "called according to the purpose"; where-
upon with them it becomes cooperating grace. Thus
faith is of grace, God's gift. It begins with sheer
acceptance, proceeds through trustful obedience,
advancing in the perception of God, and works in
enlightenment and love. The visible and necessary
means of the annulment of original sin and of sins
previously committed is the Church's sacrament of
baptism. Thereupon the Holy Spirit sheds love in
the heart, in place of lust, and the grace of God
works itself out in the man's love and corresponding
acts, until he realises his justification by faith, and
his salvation in the love of God. Through grace
and through its sacramental means, man has thus
been delivered from a state of sin, in which from
lack of God and lack of goodness he could not
abstain from sinning further in pride and con-
cupiscence.1

Pride and lust are replaced, through Christ, by
humility and love. By means of the exemplifi-
cation of the grace of God in Christ, the human

1 These last pages are somewhat indebted to Harnack's History
of Dogma.

AUGUSTINE 273

Christ primarily, Augustine reaches on to the love
and contemplation of God, wherein is man's sum-
mum bonum, his salvation and eternal life. ' Faith,
hope and love, and the greatest of these is love ; '
it is clear that Augustine has worked out this truth
of Christ after the manner of Paul: "Nam qui
recte amat, procul dubio recte credit et sperat '
(Enchiridion, 117)-

In and through Christ had come the power and
assurance of Augustine's love of God, so that he
can say, "Not with doubt, but certitude, Lord, I
love thee. Thou hast smitten my heart with thy
Word, and I have loved thee. But also heaven and
earth and all that in them is, lo, from all sides
they tell me I should love thee. . . ." 'That
is the happy life, — beata vita, — to rejoice con-
cerning thee, unto thee, and for thy sake. . . ."
"Give me thyself, my God, restore thyself to me.
Lo, I love, and if it is little, I would love more.
I cannot tell how much my love lacks of what
is enough, that my life should run to thy em-
brace, nor be turned aside, before it is hidden
in the hiding place of thy countenance. This
much I know, that all is ill with me aside from
thee, not only without but within me, and that
all my plenty which is not my God, is want." 1
The love of God is the sanction, the proportionment,
and the end of the love of all things else. "We

1 Conf. x, 6 and 22 ; xiii, 8.

274 DELIVERANCE

must love all things with reference to God, other-
wise it is lust. Inferior creatures are to be used
(utendum) with reference to God (ad Deum) ; and
our fellows are to be enjoyed (fruendum) with refer-
ence to God, toward God ; so thyself; not in thyself
ought thou to enjoy (frui) thyself, but in him who
made thee; thus also shouldst thou enjoy him
whom thou lovest as thyself. Therefore let us enjoy
ourselves and our brothers in the Lord and not dare
to surrender ourselves unto ourselves, downwards as
it were." l

The Christian summum bonum is eternal life.
The soul's love of God shall expand in knowledge,
and possess the peace of eternal fruition. This is
the perfect end, the peace of God, wherein God
may be enjoyed and known eternally. In this life,
our proper peace is through faith, a pre-fruition of
the eternal life which shall be through sight. The
peace of earth, — the peace of the body and the
soul, the peace of men with each other, lies in con-
cord and the mutual order of obedience — here
the great Roman ecclesiastic temper speaks: 'the
peace of the state is the orderly concord of citizens
in commanding and obeying; the peace of the
heavenly city is the most ordered and concordant
communion in the fruition of God and of each
other in God* (Civ. Dei, xix, 13).

"God shall be so known to us that he shall be

1 De Trinitate, ix, 13.

AUGUSTINE 275

seen by the spirit by each of us in ourselves and in
each other, and shall be seen in himself, in the new
heaven and the new earth and in every creature
which shall then exist. . . . And the thoughts
within each of us shall be manifest to the others'
(Civ. Deiy xxii, 29). 'What other end is ours —
what other peace, what other adjustment, what
other salvation — than to come to the kingdom, of
which there is no end ?" A fitting closing sentence
for Augustine's greatest work, and for his life.

CHAPTER XII

THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE

AT the end, what can we think or say of the
adjustments of these great men ? we pigmies !
we little hills to talk of mountains, — of those ele-
mental beings who laid out the paths for humanity
to stray in, or, as we hope, move onward ; who gave
clearest voice to the fears which have oppressed,
and the hopes which ever since have lifted men to
freedom or to peace. Only a sympathetic and
understanding genius, and not the writer of this
little book, might haply from the vantage ground
of our rising modern decades, place these men,
finally analyse their temperaments, their feelings
and opinions, fit them into proper categories of
partially successful effort, give each his station. Or
perchance such a one might so feel the mystery of
great personality, his own as well as theirs, that he
would make no attempt to determine their posi-
tions, their universal values, the possible eternal
verities which they expressed.

Yet though we cannot plumb their depths, and
proportion their veritable values and relationships,
it behooves us, for our own discipline, to order our
thoughts concerning them as best we can. This is

276

THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE 277

less to place those somewhat immovable and un-
scalable beings, than to range ourselves with
respect to them.

At the outset it is easy to settle our minds as to
their tangible influence on one another; since we
can see where it existed, and where there was none.
Between ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, little
mediating influence appears ; nor has it been shown
with certainty that early currents flowed from
Mesopotamia to China. As between China and
India, nothing, save certain striking resemblances,
points to any interchange of spirit until long after
the epoch of Confucius and Lao Tzu, and Gotama,
their approximate contemporary. Some centuries
elapsed before the Buddha's teachings, considerably
expanded and corrupted, became known in China.
From India, toward the north and west, no strains
of Buddhism or of Brahmanism are found in the
religion of Zarathushtra. Nor, until a compara-
tively late period, did any Zarathushtrian or Per-
sian thought affect the Jews; though the influence
of Babylonia upon the children of Abraham is sup-
posed to have been from the beginning.

Again, no suggestion from China or India or
Persia or Israel stirred the minds of the Greeks, so
far as known, before the age of Alexander. After-
wards, with the approach of the Christian era, in-
fluences fuse together through the Mediterranean
world. Hellenism and Judaism affect each other

278 DELIVERANCE

in the way of alien impact and some interpenetra-
tion, each carrying to this hostile conjunction what-
ever quasi-foreign elements it had previously
absorbed. Out of Judaism, Christianity arises;
and its conquest of the world is in part a shaking
off of paganism from its indignant feet, and in part
a refashioning of itself to pagan needs.

Turning from the question of traceable influence
between them, may we not advantageously proceed
from some fundamental human sameness ? The
impulse of life, of self-fulfilment, was strong in all
of them. Each was impelled to seek with the mind,
or gain practically through character and temper,
the peaceful freedom of thought and mood, or the
fearlessness of thought and action, making a suitable
adjustment with humanity's needs and limitations
— an adjustment which should offer the best ful-
filment of the man, the fullest actualisation of his
powers and capacities. It may be that the respon-
sive action, the universal fact of responsive action
to this common human impulse, represents to our
minds a common human validity and truth.

This much at least we may recognise and admit
as a universal element, since we find it in ourselves :
'The fiend that man harries is [still!] love of the
best;" — not the fiend, really, but, as was meant,
the god, or human life in its progress. This still
drives man on, not to his perdition, but to a more
perfect peace, and to a freedom, as he hopes, ever

THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE 279

enlarging. Our need of the best, and aspiration to
win it, is a living and impelling truth with us, as it
was with them. This, whatever else was valid,
presents itself to us as the truth running through
all the adjustments, the attained freedoms, of
these ancient men. This primal verity lies first in
the need of the endeavour for the end of happiness
and peace. It lies next in the endeavour itself.
Who can say but that each great man, even in this
endeavour, may have builded better than he knew,
have won his good, reached his peace, and gained
perhaps the final truth for man ? For ourselves,
we have found no single answer to life's problem
other than life itself, its need-inspired, forward-
driving struggle, wherein endeavour is attainment
and the path is the goal. And yet with these an-
cient seers, as with our weakly faltering selves, the
tensest fibre of the endeavour which is attainment,
is the accompanying vision of a more absolute
attainment beyond the sheer endeavour, — the hope
for some of them and some of us of a divine and
eternal verity of attainment, standing as the cliff
upon which the waves of our endeavour beat.

So we think of these men in human generalities,
which include both them and us; and next may
think of them in generalities which contrast them
with ourselves. They, at least, harmonised, even
brought to unity, the different factors of their ad-
justments. Their thinking, and still more evi-

280 DELIVERANCE

dently their feeling, was a reflex of their experience.
Their thought had to do with life, with its ultimate
problems. Their intuitions and their reasoned
knowledge, working together, kept their convictions
whole, kept their lives at one, and themselves wholly
possessed of themselves.

This self-possession and unity of life would seem
to have sprung from a singleness of spiritual founda-
tion. With Confucius, the Way of Heaven made
at once his basic intellectual conception and his
supreme devotion. Lao Tzu's and Chuang Tzu's con-
victions were all involved in their conception of the
Tao. The mind and the resolve of Yajnavalkya
turn to Brahma, a finished dialectic creation. And
with the Buddha, the whole current of his being
sets toward his goal of release from suffering, a goal
to be attained through dialectic and resolve, and
representing a harmony of reason and emotional
ardour difficult for us to conceive. The intuitions
of the Greek philosophers were likewise in accord
with their reason. Every fine concept of Plato's
mind was also a desire of his soul, and he brought
his desires together in a rejoicing unison within the
closure of his concept of God and the idea of the
good.

Passing to almost opposite modes of adjustment,
we are again convinced that Zarathushtra's devotion
to Ahura Mazda corresponded with his reason and
the best conceptions of his mind. Likewise, no

THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE 281

need to say that the devotion of the Hebrew prophets
to Yahweh was very part of their expanding thoughts
of Yahweh's righteousness and the compass of his
function in the world. So Paul, the last Jewish
and first Christian prophet, and so Augustine,
finally, brought his mind's conceptions to accord
with the resistless devotion of his soul.

Whatever the forms of their adjustment, these
men possessed themselves in the accord between
their intellectual convictions and heartfelt devotions,
— one reason why they have proved satisfying to so
many millions. The long lapse of time, which limits
survivals and sifts the big out of the confusion of
the little, presents them to us as concrete and
definite and simple. And we are still their children,
we the so-called modern nations of the earth, fol-
lowing, as it were respectively, our great forbears.
How long ago the nations digged the pits in which
they were to lie ! Not so long, of course, if we com-
pare the lapse of previous time, supposedly human,
but long enough when measured by events. China
is still rooted in the Confucian pit and the morass
of Taoism — nay, perhaps, in these opposite phases
of her temperament. It were better to speak of
her as standing on the attainment of Confucius
and the considerations of Lao Tzu. So India might
still stand in contemplation, fixed on her somewhat
slippery Absolute. If Buddhism has gone forth
from her borders, its spirit still lives in its first home,

282 DELIVERANCE

while its corrupted or expanded teachings fill so
much of eastern Asia. For us, we likewise are sons
of the Hebrew prophets, and let us hope, the chil-
dren of Jesus, — even still many of us children of
Paul and Augustine. And are we not as well the
sons of the Greeks ?

These men have passed on —

" Leaving great verse unto a little clan."

Yet they were as the mustard seed, which should
become a mighty tree, with generations upon gen-
erations of fowls lodging in its branches. Did they
not excel in deep enthusiastic well-being ? reaching
their various adjustments with such assurance that
acquiescence on their part became cordial accept-
ance, even a passionate acceptance of what life, or
the universal ways, held for them, or God lovingly
bestowed ?

Modern thought has expanded the manifold of
life's mysteriousness. Perceiving its exhaustless
mysteries at so many more points than pricked
these ancients, men no longer can attain to such
clean and concrete adjustments, with such well-
hemmed edges. Which may be quite as it should
be, in the broadening ways of human progress.

Before trying at last to fit our categories of dis-
crimination to those men, we recall how thoughtful
were their adjustments, even those which rested
directly on heroic mood. It may also be said that

THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE 283

with none of them did the main feature of his
scheme of life exclude other factors of assurance.
With the most self-reliant, there is some looking
to a power not themselves, perhaps for aid, at all
events with a respectful taking of that power into
account. While those who throw themselves on
God, like Paul or Augustine, know that their own
efforts also are needed to maintain a conduct ac-
cording with their faith. "Not I, but the grace of
God, — not I, but the spirit of Christ within me,"
— however whole-souledly Paul or Augustine might
trust in God, and accept his spirit to the disposses-
sion and replacement of their former selves, each
knew the strenuousness of the endeavour required
even to keep himself a cleanly vessel of God's grace.

Again disclaiming the ability to, place these men
according to their actual and lasting values, we must
try to distinguish, and order our own thinking in
regard to them. We must perforce use categories
sounding in our own conceptions of the kinds of
life which men may lead with serious approval.
If those ancients would not have recognised our
categories, as applied to them, they, nevertheless,
have been the source from which our constructive
thoughts largely have been taken.

Asia — the East — inclines to vagueness, and also
holds less firmly or less passionately than the West to
human personality, and to the demands and full de-
velopment of the individual. Confucius was a tre-

284 DELIVERANCE

mendous person — Chinese tradition does not err in
making him nine feet high. He was a very great social
and political organiser. He would set his people, as he
had fixed himself, within a beneficent web of rites and
ceremonies, formative of character, constructive and
preservative of the State. It was a scheme follow-
ing the Way of Heaven, to which men must conform
with unremitting care. This made Confucius's ad-
justment. While the detail was a meticulous web,
the unifying principle, the norm of human life,
was vague and impersonal. It could utter no com-
mands, but could only exemplify itself and its ways
as the standard of conduct. Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu,
also looking to the Way, found therein quite other
exemplification — found therein the opposite of any
mandate of action, and no inducement to painstaking
and minute observance. Contemplation of the Tao
— the Eternal Way, the All, the Absolute, the What-
not — in its endless construction and undoing, was
their adjustment. Their contemplative acquies-
cence conformed to the laisser-aller of the Abso-
lute; and naturally with no obstinate retention of
the individuality of each temporary acquiescing
human form. As inaction is vaguer than action, so
Taoism is vaguer, even in its principles, than Con-
fucianism.

In India the human adjustment is not merely
careless of the individual ; it has ensconced itself in
detestation of concrete, pestilentially changing, in-

THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE 285

dividuality: its end, its attainment, lies in the. final
elimination of that. So with Brahmanism in its
affirmation of the Absolute; so with Buddhism in
its denial of the same.

A change indeed to reach the land of Zarathushtra,
the fighting ally of his righteous warring God. No
acquiescence here, no negative adjustment; but
victory over evil foes, and the reward of life there-
after. Ahura is somewhat less clearly conceived
than Yahweh — who also 'teacheth my hands to
war and my fingers to fight." Of all celestial char-
acters, Yahweh is drawn with most trenchant line
— a tremendous dramatis persona. If we have not
seen his form, we have heard his voice, and through
unmistakable utterances have been taught his will,
and with what blows from his rod have been driven
to do it ! — his rod of punishment, his rod of love,
his rod of promise ! Yahweh was an individual ! a
personality ! In obeying him, in following his ways,
the Jew developed his individuality, or, if one will,
the individuality of that most individual race.

The Greek gods possessed a full store of human
waywardness. They are revealed through poetry.
The Greek did not develop his character from con-
scious obedience to them ; but quite consciously out
of his own strength and reason, and out of the
sword-play and compromise of the energies of his
desires. Nor did the Roman draw motives of de-
velopment from his gods; rather, before as well as

286 DELIVERANCE

after he had eaten of the Greek tree of knowledge,
he evolved himself by virtue of his own tenacity.

Christianity — Jesus, Paul, Augustine. Were they
not of the heritage of Israel ? and Augustine, per-
haps Paul, of the heritage of Greece and Rome as
well ? It may be that from Christianity came the
final building up of individuality for the ancient
world. Assuredly there came from it, both for that
world and our own, the final adjustment of the in-
dividual with God's power and love, in which he,
the individual Christian, was saved and completed
and fulfilled. He who giveth his life, shall save
and redeem and fulfil himself: bread thrown upon
the waters, returning after many days as the new
bread of life. The characters of Christians differed ;
in various ways they gained the peace and profitable
freedom of their great adjustment, through grace
freeing their spirits in the truth that maketh free,
and in perfect accord with almighty power, fulfilling
their lives to all eternity in the love of God.

Each of these marked adjustments of the an-
cient world held elements belonging to the rest.
One may observe that in their sequence and suc-
cession they tend to change and merge into each
other. Their protagonists, ranged according to the
attitude of each toward his individual destiny, will
fall into two loose-bordered groups : contemplators,
and those moved by a closer personal purpose. The
contemplator appears to stand outside his destiny,

THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE 287

and to contemplate it or something else. In the
other group, the man and his happiness, his peace
and freedom, are incorporate in his destiny, hang
upon it : he moves and has his being in the thought
of his fortunes upon earth or his lot thereafter.

In some way, the Contemplators find their peace
and freedom in considering the Universe, or in
meditating upon their natures and the connection
between their destinies and the universal order.
They may think or dream themselves around and
above the processes of nature and necessity. Thus
they become the equal or superior of what they can-
not resist, by realising its infinitude : " L'homme n'est
qu'un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais c'est un
roseau pensant ! ' Lao Tzu is here, and his disciple
Chuang Tzu. They realise the universe, and their
own natures as held within its all-embracing ways.
They love its infinite range, and bathe in the amplitude
of the mystery of life. Potent dreamers they, who
could dream far out beyond the reach of their individ-
ual lot, which they held as lightly as it held them.

The Brahmans of India did not dream as suavely,
nor with equal imagination ; but they reasoned with
insistent metaphysical acuteness. They did not so
serenely rest above their personal destinies.
Chuang Tzu, knowing that his being would be
scattered to its elements, smiled at the prospect.
The Brahmans were pricked by the need to think
out their release. Their thought was not sheer

288 DELIVERANCE

contemplation, but was goaded by longing for free-
dom from desire, and for freedom from the torment-
ing impermanence of individuality. As for Gotama,
the Buddha, the motive of his arduous thinking
appears the same. But the desire to point out to
others the path to salvation lifted his personal ad-
justment to Saviourhood, and made him the re-
vealer of a universal refuge; in other words, the
founder of a religion.

From the East to the West, the temper changes,
and contemplators may be called more fitly inves-
tigators. The Greek vita contemplativa becomes a
happy devotion to the quest of knowledge. At
first the philosophers are busier investigating the
world about them than in considering their place in
it, or their inner nature and particular destiny.
But, in time, the processes of thought and contem-
plation come homing back to the thinker. There-
upon the western tenacity of individuality impresses
itself on the intellectual energy which is occupied
with investigation, and the thinker can no longer
stand aloof from interest in his present welfare and
future destiny. The line of early Greek thinkers
passes on to Democritus, to Socrates, to Plato; and
the search for truth is impressed forever with
eudaimonism, that is to say, with the compelling
sense of the determining significance and importance
of the welfare and happiness of the individual
thinker. It was Plato who enriched the contem-

THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE 289

plative adjustment with that blessed mood arising
from beautiful conceptions realised as part of the
soul of man and its perfecting. Then through the
belief, uplifted and glorified by him, of the immor-
tality of the ennobled soul, he made absolute the
central value of the individual man and his destiny.
This was his crowning contribution to spiritual free-
dom. After him, Aristotle gathered all knowledge
as the basis and content of his intellectual satis-
faction. With less temperamental geniality and
colder mentality than Plato, he fixed the apex of his
happiness in the contemplation of unmoved but all-
moving causes.

So Plato linked the contemplative adjustment to
the blessedness of the immortal soul. His golden
joinder of intellectuality and hope looked with a
lover's eyes to God — such lover's eyes becoming
rather steely gray with Aristotle. Succeeding to the
Aristotelian universality of intellectual interest,
philosophy, in Stoicism, ceased to be worthy of the
name, so narrowly did it restrict its considerations
to that which made for man's peace of mind. Stoi-
cism began as an adjustment of the self-reliant soul,
even as did Epicureanism. In the course of years,
the self-reliance staled ; Epicureanism had nothing
to turn to, while Stoicism, through' its more ener-
getic conception of the Divine, became prayerful —
the Stoic began to look beyond himself for the
complete assurance of his peace.
u

290 DELIVERANCE

Thus the vita contemplatively having centred its
interest in the contemplator's welfare and destiny,
found that it could not insure the one or fulfil the
other. Incidentally the self-reliant intellect has
proved itself limited, terrestrial, and unable to satisfy a
nature which is conscious of having to do with eternity.
As a means of human adjustment and deliverance,
philosophic thought has broken down. For aid and
comfort, for peace and assurance, for blessedness, in
fine, the thinker turns to God. The freedom and
assurance of his life have assumed the mode and form
of salvation.

Clearly we have passed from the group who stand
above their destinies, content to contemplate the
universe, and themselves as elements of its resistless
processes. We are in the company of those whose
adjustment with life is vitally incorporate in the
destiny of their individual selves. Moreover, we
have become, let us hope fruitfully, entangled with
another principle in the ordering of our adjustments.
Those men who stood above their destinies, in dis-
interested contemplation of the universe, or con-
tent with the quest of knowledge, were utterly self-
reliant, even unconsciously so : for the height of
self-reliance is to be unconscious of relying on one-
self and not upon another. As the former group of
adjustments pass into those which are insistent on
the welfare of the protagonist, they pass through
a stage of self-reliance which has become self-con-

THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE 291

scious; and then into the stage where conscious
self-reliance gives way to a conscious lack of it, and
at last becomes a yearning for divine salvation.

Hereupon, however, a complementary and final
element enters ; the love of that Power upon which
the man relies to safeguard and complete his destiny.
This may become absorbing devotion, an energy
which carries the man again beyond himself, and
once more may lift him above personal anxiety. In
the great exemplars of this devotion — indeed in
the Great Exemplar — trust in God, communion
with Him, is perfect; while solicitude as to salva-
tion is lost in consecration to God's saving purposes.
In this way, the obedient and co-operating zeal of
the Servant in Isaiah is completed in the sonship of
Jesus : >{ Surely Yahweh will do nothing, but he
reveals his secret to his servants the prophets."
With more absolute union, "the Father loveth the
Son, and hath given all things into his hand," and
"the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he
seeth the Father doing."

In Paul, the need of salvation has become again
a driving energy, while devotion to the salvation of
his fellows, his working unison with the grace of
God, likewise consumes him. He symbolises the
varying moods of Christians after him, whose need
of salvation is compelling. Augustine is in this cate-
gory. With Paul and Augustine, however, and
countless other Christians, the sense of God and of

292 DELIVERANCE

the Saviour's deed and constant function, leads to a
grateful surrender of the saved one to Him who has
saved him — a surrender offered in confidence and
love, if not in self-abandonment.

Who shall say whether the pendulum might not
thus swing back to an abandonment of human indi-
viduality ? The course taken by the development
of personality in Western Asia and Eastern Europe
had led to the need which only Christianity satisfied.
The need was a religious need ; a religious adjust-
ment was required. Through the near preceding
centuries, the human personality had become acutely
conscious of itself, and of its cardinal importance.
It had also arrived at the realisation that it could
not save and fulfil itself, and of itself attain its
rightful destiny. Christianity offered this salvation
and fulfilment, offered them through the agency of
divine and human personality, that of God the
Father and Christ. The Gospel was a reaching out
of the fulness of divine personality to the need of
human personality, — and not only a reaching out
in power but an intimate bestowal of comfort, with
love close and personal. Such a divine giving safe-
guarded and assured the recipient in the eternal love
and power of God. His most unqualified surrender
of himself could be only unto such safekeeping.
The conception of salvation is thus completed in the
answer of the human love to the divine ; the Chris-
tian fulfils himself in the love of God. Herein, as

THE ARROWS ARE BEYOND THEE 293

a religious adjustment, Christianity would seem
final.

Another question of import as to the Gospel's
finality was to arise from the intellectual and in-
quisitive side of human nature, and keep itself in-
sistent. How did the Gospel bear upon the growth
and expansion of the human mind through knowl-
edge ? Was it antagonistic or favourable ? relevant
or irrelevant ? The varying answers which have
been given to this question, or have somehow been
lived out, extend through the centuries called by the
Christian name. The age which first received the
Gospel did not care supremely for knowledge. When
Augustine declared that he would know God and
the soul, and these alone, he uttered the intensest
cravings of his nature, which were not for knowledge.
With other men in other times, God and the soul
might include the universe of God-created things.

In its acceptance, or in its application to life, the
Gospel could be narrowed or broadened. It was
adapted to the humblest human want, and yet
sufficient for the soul uplifted to its heights of love
and spiritual consecration. It did not speak directly
to the inquisitive mind, not being a method of in-
tellectual living. But the mind of man, — the full
compass of his intellectual cravings and faculties,

- is from God. If the Gospel was salvation, was
it not to be salvation for the whole man ? Could
it not "save" the uttermost reaches of his mind,

294 DELIVERANCE

as well as the purest impulses of his love ? How
should it hamper the humanity which it had come
to save eternally ?

And still the human personality gives one pause.
It seems so necessarily a passing phase, not to be
imagined as lasting forever, or as the vehicle of an
eternal here and now. Think of eternity and of
thyself, O man ! Do the two fit each other ?
The body is impermanent. The mind also unfolds
with the human years, changing and finite. Whether
embodied or disembodied, is it suited for eternity ?
Would it think its thoughts, or love its loves, for-
ever ? Must not its finitude tire ? Could it love
even God, and think on Him and the universe,
eternally? The last is perhaps the most tolerable
idea that can be linked with an enduring finite per-
sonality. Yet Christian rapture has tended to pass
on, through this conception, as it were ; has sought
to lose itself in God, to become in and of Him.
Musing saints have anticipated deliverance from
themselves. Only absorption in Deity contents
them. Through His eyes only would they see;
only through His heart would they love. Less
rapturous, more analytic, tempers also may conclude
that only infinite life is suited to eternity : not man,
but God.

/HpHE following pages contain advertisements of
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•••

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE MEDIAEVAL MIND

A HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THOUGHT AND
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character.

CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION.

THE PASSING OF THE ANTIQUE MAN.

PHASES OF PAGAN DECADENCE.

THE ANTIQUE CULTURE.

PAGAN ELEMENTS CHRISTIANIZED IN TRANSMISSION.

IDEALS OF KNOWLEDGE, BEAUTY, LOVE.

ABANDONMENT OF PAGAN PRINCIPLES IN A CHRISTIAN SYS-
TEM OF LIFE.

CHRISTIAN PROSE.
CHRISTIAN POETRY.
CHRISTIAN ART.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New Tork

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UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

Taylor, Henry Osborn

Prophets, poets and philoso-
T3 phers of the ancient world

1919

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